When Ming Campbell ran for the leadership, his best line was that Britain did not need a third conservative party. The situation now is so much worse; we have three hard authoritarian parties engaged in virility contests for who can be more horrible to and about very vulnerable people. I would like us to be much more emphatically full-fat liberal in the things we do and say, particularly in relation to migration.
I want to see our spokespeople saying that immigrants make us a stronger, better country, are net contributors to both the exchequer and our wider social life, and that in a liberal, plural society, and we are just about still a liberal society, the presence of another culture does not have to threaten yours.
I want them to bang the drum for human rights, both in law and spirit. I want them to say proudly and firmly that people have a right to seek asylum, and that this right comes from the same laws and conventions that protect everyone who was born here. I want them to say that to claim asylum you have to physically show up, and that is harder to do by conventional routes since the Tory government shut a lot of them down.
I want them to say that if we leave the ECHR, which I fear Starmer and Cooper are now privately toying with, everybody in this country will be less safe. I want them to cite Tony Benn – a good civil libertarian, whatever our other differences with him – saying that how a government treats refugees is instructive of how it would treat the rest of us if it could get away with it.
I want them to bang on about how swapping human rights for a British Bill of Rights means your statutory standing and privileges are based on your citizenship, which, however rarely it might happen, can be revoked. Ask Sajid Javid, he did it.
I want them to say that an immigrant cannot…CANNOT…directly take a British person’s job, any more than I could take a Geordie’s job when I moved from Lincolnshire to Tyneside.
I want them to say that being concerned about women and children is fair, but only being concerned when your suspected source of harm is of a particular ethnicity and migration status is, to be very generous, wrongheaded, especially given the atrocities other women, children and men are fleeing, including on boats. Protesting a hotel full of people who you have lumped in with a suspected perpetrator in another part of the country – well, that deserves a different adjective. I also want someone to really, really take Robert Jenrick to task over his loathsome, Powellite stirring.
I want more challenge, and more publicising of challenge, in the Commons to the Home Secretary and her Reform-lite rhetoric. If I was going really luxurious, I might even dare to hope for her Trumpian virtue-signalling deportation posters to be called out for what they are – shameless pandering and tabloid Labour opportunism.
I want them to say that even if somebody has arrived here illegally, they are entitled to be treated with dignity until they are returned, not, as the Guardian has alleged, abused and denied basic humane treatment.
I appreciate there are places where this might cause challenging doorstep conversations, but so be it. If Reform, in red, blue or original turquoise flavour, knock on my door, their canvases will get a polite but robust, if not volcanic, argument. I expect them to answer back.
I truly do not think we can trust anyone else to be the radical rights-based liberal alternative to cheap, dangerous, neo-xenophobic truncheonism. It has to be us that takes the fight to Labour, the Tories and Reform on migrant, asylum and refugee rights. It has to be us that stands up for human rights in both the legal and philosophical sense. It has to be us that explains to people we meet, whatever their broader politics, that human rights protect them and are they would be less safe and less free without them.
I would be genuinely delighted to learn that we have been pushing this hard and I just haven’t noticed, but even if so we can always do more. We are the party of human rights, or we are nothing. Time to double down.
* Jack Nicholls is a Liberal Democrat member in North East England. He has also written on human rights and social work.
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19 Comments
This has got Brexit mk 2, written all over it.
Farage talking to the people.
The rest of the parties talking at the people.
We have to deal with the concerns regarding the Human Rights Act and the ECHR, in particular how it appears to be weaponised to frustrate immigration and deportation policy.
It appears to me that we have a binary choice, whether we like it or not.
1. Serious reform of the ECHR and Human Rights Act in particular Article 8, or
2. we leave the ECHR and the Human Rights Act is repealed.
I don’t want us to be sitting here in 2030 wondering how we have left the ECHR and why Farage is prime minister.
Oh, there are always other options
1) Do nothing
2) Let asylum seekers work, if they can find a job. Until their asylum claim has been heard ofc. Many already are as delivery riders in a black market way. Let them find their own accommodation.
In 2024, net migration to the UK was 431,000, a significant decrease from the previous year’s 860,000. But you wouldn’t believe it from the rhetoric.
Jenny, I see you’ve picked option 2.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you when in 2030 Farage is PM and the UK has left the ECHR.
With great respect @slamdac, my argument is to defend both the concept and letter of Human Rights and the ECHR for the very good reason that they protect our rights. That’s not weaponising, its using legal rights for what they are supposed to be used for – defence against authority. If that is weaponising, then jury trials and the presumption of innocence equate to weaponising due process to frustrate getting good conviction statistics. Doing what you suggest would by all logic mean capitulating to the shameless lies being told by this self-aggrandising alt-right wrecking crew. If we do that, Farage won’t need to be PM, we’ll have done it for him, and at this rate Starmer probably will.
I agree about Brexit Mk 2, but for a different reason – Brexit may well not have happened if pro-Europeans, including us, had made a solid, consistent and honest case for why being in the EU was better than what we now have, preferably more than 8 weeks before the vote. Not perfect, not utopian – better. I say that, incidentally, as someone who by Lib Dem standards was quite unemotionally pragmatic in their remainerism. Cameron’s 2016 renegotiation, if that’s your comparison, was never going to keep the hardliners happy, because they are hardliners.
She’s perfectly capable of standing up for herself, but for what it’s worth I see absolutely no connecting route between @Jenny’s suggestion and your option 2. If you don’t want Farage in no. 10, we have to confront this nonsense head on – someone does at any rate. Anything else just greases the wheels. @Jenny – I agree about the freedom to work. I liked Tim Farron’s speech saying there was a left-wing and right-wing case for that shout.
Apologies Jenny, presumed pronouns and shouldn’t have, was concentrating on argument.
To be fair to Ed Davey, and I’m not his greatest fan, he did make a compelling speech a few months ago about the dangers of Farage. He needs to do it again and again…… and to demand the same airtime as Farage gets from the BBC to do so.
“We must stop the rise of destructive, divisive politics – Ed Davey”
YouTube · Liberal Democrats
1.4K+ views · 3 months ago
3:19
Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, speaking at the Spring 2025 Liberal Democrat conference about the threat posed by Nigel Farage,
I agree that the issue has to be addressed. Like it or not, there is widespread frustration at the failure to “stop the boats”, and this is a feeding frenzy for the hard right. As LDs we should not hesitate to look at what other European countries are doing, and formulate our own distinctive approach.
@David Raw, unfortunately the BBC go by current opinion polls rather than parliamentary representation ‘re air time.
@ David Raw 27th Aug ’25 – 4:16pm…To be fair to Ed Davey, and I’m not his greatest fan, he did make a compelling speech a few months ago about the dangers of Farage..
Perhaps; but I’m reminded of how a wannabee politician, ignored by both Conservative and Labour leaders, was given a prime time, one-on-one debate by the leader of a third party…
The rest is history
“Let asylum seekers work, if they can find a job. Until their asylum claim has been heard…. Let them find their own accommodation.”
Seems obvious, doesn’t it? But the problem is that asylum seekers choose to go to countries where they can quickly find work and get somewhere decent to live. Our claims backlog acts as a deterrent. A government which abandoned that deterrent could become very unpopular.
A thumbs up to @expats. Should have left him to be subject to redicule by tv and radio comedians as he sought any pulicity….. but the rest is history and a story yet to come…
@Christopher Haig; I sent a message to World at One complaining about their airtime for Farage and pointing out that we have 72 MPs who work hard in Parliament; they responded by saying that giving Farage publicity ensures he is subject to public scrutiny. They miss the point that individual separate interviews do not constitute proper debate in which Farage can be challenged by those who hold a different view.
If what we offer the electorate is a slightly more realistic version of the Farage rhetoric, or even just say it won’t work, then those who think our governments are wilfully ignoring the public’s desires – particularly on immigration – are likely to vote Reform just to get their own back. Meanwhile, those for whom the Reform ideas are anathema will stay at home. Why vote for the watered down version when you can have the real thing?
I don’t think we should do anything about the ECHR. I think that the immigration debate has been largely on Farage’s terms with the collusion of the right wing media.
I think we could point out that most immigrants are here, quite legally, by invitation to work, for examples in the NHS, Care homes, seasonal agricultural work. Those that arrive as refugees are often the results of failed foreign policy interventions in the ME, fleeing persecution or torture ( I notice that Farage seems quite happy to send people back to be tortured). As I said, I think they should be allowed to work while their adylum claim is decided, and then allowed to stay or deported depending on the outcome.
As to the right wing claim that they want to protect women and girls from predators – I notice no campaigns from these people for domestic violence shelters or against generalised male violence.
“Perhaps; but I’m reminded of how a wannabee politician, ignored by both Conservative and Labour leaders, was given a prime time, one-on-one debate by the leader of a third party…”
Anyone who thinks Farage should be ignored by the Liberal Democrats in the hope he will go away is not living in the real world. The real political debate going on across the western world right now is authoritarianism vrs liberalism We (Liberal Democrats) have to be in the thick of that debate because without us it will be lost.
Here’s the latest from Ed Davey.
https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=ecff43fea8e8be828676033f269b67427551a4980a98923d44c4e07dc312a72fJmltdHM9MTc1NjMzOTIwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=138d899d-8202-639c-0340-9d4283e26267&psq=the+populist+play+book+ed+davey&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZmFjZWJvb2suY29tL0Vkd2FyZGpEYXZleS92aWRlb3MvZmFyYWdlcy1wb3B1bGlzdC1wbGF5Ym9vay8yNDU1MDAwMjUxNDU5MzU0Mi8
Tristan Ward 28th Aug ’25 – 10:45am….Anyone who thinks Farage should be ignored by the Liberal Democrats in the hope he will go away is not living in the real world….
No-one is suggesting that ignoring Farage is a viable policy today…My comment was about Clegg opening Pandora’s box when Farage was just a wannabee.. Nick Clegg styled himself as the man to stop Farage but, instead, lost the debates by a greater than 2-1 margin..
The outcome was that the debates boosted Farage’s profile and awarded both publicity and impetus to his party in the run up to the European elections…
As I said; the rest is history
@expats
“the rest is history”
It is. You can blame only the Liberal Democrats for failing to stop Farage if you like but the failure was far wider and deeper than that:. I’m not sure looking back more than 10 years and blaming the Lib Dem’s then leader tells the whole story -r or even a significant part of it.
Pre-Brexit “conventional” political methods won’t stop Farage. We have to find another way. I don’t think abstract arguments about Human Rights and pointing out that Reform Ltd’s sums on deportation don’t add up is the way. They won’t convert Reform voters or people wavering to the appeal of the “commons sense” that actually demonises minorities.
I think the best way is to link Farage and Reform with Putin, Trump and MAGA. Farage’s attempts to distance himself from his “admiration” of Putin are cringe worthy. Putin is a threat to Europe. Farage should be labelled as an appeaser. and a supporter of Trump’s economic chaos and military unreliability. This is real patriotism – not the ersatz patriotism of flags on lamp posts.
And – luckily for us – Labour can’t take this line because of the diplomatic need to be nice to Trump and it looks as if the Tories are irresistibly drawn to Farage.
Farage won’t be stopped solely by smearing him with the Putin link. He won’t be stopped solely by pointing out that his plans are ridiculously unworkable. He won’t be stopped solely by telling the voters how much we need immigrants, given that so many voters won’t agree. But he might be stopped by making all these points and more.
He might be stopped by pointing out that he sold us a pup on Brexit, which he promised would cut immigration, and instead it rocketed. He might be stopped by politicians agreeing that global people smuggling is a scandal, rather than letting Farage claim that he alone has recognised that. He might be stopped by pointing out that he is a misogynist trying to kid us all that he has suddenly become a great defender of women’s rights, provided that enables him to attack immigrants, that is. He might be stopped by painting him as a third-rate hedge-fund charlatan. All these things need saying. We shouldn’t try to pick and choose.
Respect for human rights derive from a deep compassion and empathy for the human condition. I think we should focus on this compassion rather than the rights that derive from them. This allows us to speak to the totality of the human experience rather than specific rights.