It’s been a long time since I last wrote one of these. In truth, I’ve not been entirely in the right frame of mind to do so, not quite as engaged as I might be. But there’s a lot happening in the world, and Liberal Democrat Voice is the place for Liberal Democrats and others of similar mind to discuss them, so here I am, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on a springtime Monday morning.
I guess that the most pressing order of business is whether or not the United Kingdom is being drawn irrevocably into a war not of our making. What is the difference between attack and defence, and who does that really matter to? The Iranian political leadership aren’t exactly going to be referring to international law if they define Britain as a combatant, regardless of what Keir Starmer or anyone else in our Government claim, yet we have a moral responsibility to protect those under fire across the region and to extract those British nationals trapped in the Gulf through no fault of their own.
But, regardless of what view you take as to our level of involvement, one thing that is abundantly clear is that reliance on fossil fuels extracted in less than entirely friendly nations is a risk that a nation like the United Kingdom simply should not be taking. Fuel security is going to an issue, whether we address it collectively with our European neighbours or by upping our game in terms of home-based renewables.
And we’re not alone in facing that challenge, as Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy MEP, the Dutch Chair of Renew Europe’s working group on sustainability and structural policies said a week ago:
European citizens are feeling the consequences of higher energy prices directly in their pockets. European leaders have to quit being in denial. We need to act decisively to reduce our dependence on energy imports: invest in clean energy, expand electricity grids and make homes for energy efficient.
It’s another reason why Reform UK’s opposition to renewable energy is yet another reminder that they don’t want a strong and independent United Kingdom, but a vassal state to whichever strongman they’re cosying up to this week.
Here on Liberal Democrat Voice, we’ll be covering some of the other challenging issues of the day. Jean-Francois Burford suggests how schools might look twenty-five years from now and what steps we need to take to get from here to there, whilst Rosemary Runswick, a fellow denizen of God’s own county (Suffolk, for the record), wonders aloud whether or not our MPs got it wrong when voting on the Online Safety Bill.
We also have a debut article from Sal Aziz, who wants to encourage you to contribute to the Conference Access Fund next time, and outlines what a grant from the fund allowed him to do at York last weekend. In editing it for publication, I even learnt about a group within the party that I hadn’t encountered before, and that reminds me that there are a swathe of such groups within the party whose activities probably don’t receive enough coverage. Like yours, perhaps?
My somewhat heightened level of activity means that there’s a review of the week ahead in the Lords, as well as Sarah Teather‘s maiden speech, which took place on the Thursday before Conference. Apologies to Sarah for not covering it earlier…
And finally, for now at least, we’re expecting our regular weekly column from Mathew Hulbert. His somewhat controversial take on Ed Davey’s leadership last week triggered quite the debate in the comments, so it’ll be interesting to see what he has to say this time. Just so that you know, it’s as much a mystery to me, his Duty Editor, as it is to you but whatever it is, it’s Mathew, unvarnished by us. No pressure, Mathew…
So, without further ado, welcome to Monday. May it bring you a little joy…
* Mark Valladares is the Monday Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, and is extremely fond of sixteenth and seventeenth century madrigals.
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9 Comments
“It is now all but impossible to claim that the great “world leadership” on climate change is producing “cheap energy”. What Britain has demonstrated to the world is how to pursue a territorial carbon production target in a way that produces amongst the highest prices in the world. Britain has therefore provided a great example of how not to do it, and no other country will be looking to it to see how to replicate this.
Believers in cheaper power should next ask why the costs and prices are so high. It is not hard to find out. Britain now needs twice the capacity of generation and twice the grid capacity to produce the same output, in addition to a host of batteries, and pumped storage, plus lots and lots of imports. Even by 2030, on the government’s trajectory, 35GW of gas is needed to run 5% of the time”
Sir Dieter Helm.
@ Craig Levine,
“Britain now needs twice the capacity of generation and twice the grid capacity to produce the same output, in addition…….”
No one said there was an easy fix to the problem of climate change. However, it doesn’t make any sense to say that therefore we should pretend that the problem doesn’t exist.
We have to be more constructive. There’s a valid argument that there isn’t any alternative to developing safe nuclear energy. Dr James Hansen, who is also very much aware of a climate issue, is a key proponent of this viewpoint.
https://www.weplanet.org/post/climate-scientist-james-hansen-the-opposition-to-nuclear-power-is-truly-insane
I suspect that events in the Middle East are going to teach us all the brutal lesson on energy, that we ought to have stayed awake for in A level physics. That lesson is that First World “modernity” was achieved with 150 years of fossil fuels, and it will disappear without fossil fuels over the next three decades.
I am very happy to be proved wrong.
If renewables are the answer to our future, as many still think, then surely now is the time to step-up those renewables into the “fossil-gap” for making fertilizers, plastics, diesel machinery for mining and agriculture, road transportation of food and goods, water treatment, modern medicine, cement production, iron and steel manufacture, chemicals industry etc.?
Madrigals are fun but Gregorian chants are even more fun to sing!
‘yet we have a moral responsibility to protect those under fire across the region’
Is this true? If so it must apply globally surely? and how can it be true if it is not realistically possible?
There’s a widespread tendency to talk about energy in the UK as if it’s only electricity. Renewables provide something in the region of 40% of our electricity overall – and even on good days very rarely do we see no gas being used. Electricity is around 30% of our total energy consumption. The remaining 70% is all fossil fuel, mostly gas & oil now. Used for transport, heat, and industrial processes (eg making fertiliser).
So only around 12% of our total energy demand is renewables. If the Iran war results in a 20% drop in fossil fuel availability, we would need slightly more than double our existing renewable capacity to compensate, which wouldn’t happen quickly.
Think more EVs, heat pumps, green steel etc.
I’m very pleased to hear that there is an article on how our MPs voted on the Online Safety Bill. In the past I have expressed serious concern about the impact of online harms on women and girls. My views were not generally well received by (mostly male) Lib Dem Voice readers. I think that Lib Dem Voice would benefit from a dose of traditional feminism!
@Anne, I don’t know what ‘traditional feminism” is, hopefully not the second wave that largely excluded non-white women? But as a modern feminist and expert on cybersecurity, I suggest you read this excellent post from another feminist, https://www.libdemvoice.org/did-the-party-accidentally-vote-for-a-surveillance-state-79375.html the bills to destroy our civil liberities and privacy are not helping women and girls. They will destroy people’s lives via hacks and surveillance and I suspect Munira’s support of these dystopian ideas will hugely hobble her future in the party and parliment.
@ Anne,
If you knew some of my fellow Editorial Team members, you’d know that feminism is not something secondary as far as we are concerned.
But, hopefully, you will have read and found valuable Rosemary’s article.