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Tag Archives: liberalism

Why I’m a liberal, through the lens of the Oxford Labour Club

By Zagham Farhan | Thu 10th April 2025 - 12:01 pm

Being an absolute lover of politics, I often fill my term-time Saturday evenings with attendance at the University of Oxford’s Labour Club’s social ‘Beer and Bickering’. This is a social event which features three motions on various pressing political topics, decreasing in seriousness throughout the night. One fantastic feature of this event is that continually reminds me why I’m a liberal – and why liberalism matters.

Part of the reason I attend is that I love being one of the few people who breaks up the total consensus of opinion on most topics. Motions have included ‘this house would introduce a maximum wage’ – which demonstrated an incredible misunderstanding of who actually makes up the bulk of the British state’s tax revenue – and the one which inspired this article, ‘this house would ban private healthcare.’

The debate went about exactly how you’d expect a bunch of left wing 19-year-olds to discuss private healthcare. The general sentiment was that it was a total moral outrage that certain people could pay to access care. I note that this was often separate from practical arguments about capacity, with the overriding consensus being that even if it had no impact on the ability of the ordinary working person to access healthcare, it was still wrong that someone should be able to pay for a different service.

The room was not, I fear, turned by my rousing case for individual choice and liberty. It was turned, however, by a member of their committee reminding those present that under the current system access to certain aspects of trans healthcare are only available privately, and not on the NHS. How can we ban private healthcare, the argument went, if it would cause suffering to these individuals who the government won’t provide for?

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Posted in Op-eds | 16 Comments

Liberals and socialists – a response

By Jack Meredith | Wed 2nd April 2025 - 7:30 am

Last week, I came across an article by Chris Whiting on Lib Dem Voice, which you can read here. Chris makes a compelling case for why liberals and socialists should collaborate, and I highly recommend it. Nevertheless, I would like to offer an alternative perspective.

I want to focus on a line from Chris’s article in which he states, “If you follow the principles of liberalism to their logical conclusion, you arrive at socialism.” I disagree. Socialism aims to establish a society where private property has been abolished, and the working class owns the means of production. In contrast, liberalism places less emphasis on who owns the means of production and more on issues such as freedom of speech, liberal democracy, freedom of the press, and, most notably, freedom of enterprise.

While socialism is primarily an economic theory, liberalism emphasises individual freedom. Both socialism and liberalism support economic freedom as one of the most critical forms. However, while socialism focuses intently on this area, liberalism views it as merely one aspect of a broader framework.

Another specific issue when rereading this line is the established history of liberalism and socialism. Although I was born in the UK, my cousin’s family is of Polish descent. My cousin’s family were hunted down and executed on Joseph Stalin’s orders. Those who managed to escape fled to the UK and made new lives for themselves. Those who did not were taken into a forest, shot in the back of the head, and buried in a mass grave in a series of mass executions now more commonly known as The Katyn Massacre.

Stalin’s theories, particularly “Socialism in One Country,” came at a significant cost: mass deportations, state-sanctioned murder, and the complete dismantling of civil society. One might argue, “But this is merely an extreme example.” In response, I urge you to consider China, North Korea, Vietnam, or Cuba. To uphold socialism, these nations abolished liberal democracy, committed crimes against humanity, and ignored any semblance of freedom. Where socialism has emerged as the dominant ideology, bloodshed has followed.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged socialism | 24 Comments

Why I’ve realised I’m a Socialist, and why Liberals and Socialists must work together

By Chris Whiting | Thu 27th March 2025 - 8:30 am

For a long time, I simply considered myself a liberal. I believed in personal freedom, a strong but fair economy, and the power of government to create opportunity. I wanted a system that worked for everyone, but I also thought markets, when properly regulated, could be a force for good. But over the years, I’ve come to realise that these values of equality, fairness, and a society that serves all its people are not just liberal values. They are socialist ones too.

This isn’t about abandoning liberalism. My liberal resolve has never been stronger. But, I have been forced to recognise that if you follow the principles of liberalism to their logical conclusion, you arrive at socialism. If you believe in fairness, then you have to acknowledge that an economy where billionaires accumulate wealth while millions struggle is inherently unfair. If you believe in democracy, then you have to ask why it stops at the ballot box. Why workers don’t have real power in their workplaces, or why people don’t have a say in the essential services they rely on.

For too long, liberals have sought to mitigate capitalism’s excesses rather than confront the system itself. They have pushed for fairer taxation, stronger public services, and better protections for workers. But these are reactive measures that attempt to manage inequality rather than prevent it. And the problem with inequality is that it isn’t just an unfortunate byproduct of capitalism. It’s a feature.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged capitalism, economy, philosophy and socialism | 21 Comments

Avoiding an end of history

By Peter Wrigley | Fri 14th March 2025 - 12:53 pm

As a dedicated Liberal I’ve always vaguely subscribed to the Whig view of history, defined roughly that, by and large, on the whole and in the main, things are gradually getting better. Improvements are due to the gradual progress made in the development of democracy, increases in individual liberty, and advances in science and technology. There are, of course, occasional steps backwards, but the direction is generally onwards and upwards.

To take each in turn, since 1945 in the UK we’ve seen the increase in women’s and minority representation in parliament, and the creation of effective specialist committees; we no longer hang people, racial discrimination is illegal, gays, lesbians, and unmarried mothers get a better deal, and couples can live together respectably without formal ties if they prefer things that way; and science and technology have made astonishing strides, especially n the fields and medicine and communications.

On the downsides, we still don’t have a fair election system, turnout at elections has fallen, local government has been enfeebled and the executive’s control over parliament has increased intolerably; individual and institutional racism and suspicion of “the other” endure and have become a campaigning tools for mainstream parities as well as the extreme right; some scientific “advances” (eg plastics) are polluting the planet or contribute to climate change, improvements in communications have made it much easier to disseminate misinformation as well as enlightenment – and nuclear weapons, could bring an end to most life on the planet, except for microbes.

But by and large (again) Britain is a much better place to live in now than it was 80 years ago, and much the same can certainly be said of most of Europe and probably most parts of the rest of the world (exceptions being such as Tibet, Myanmar, parts of China, and, of course, the areas where “minor” wars persist.)

However the election and actions of President Trump very clearly thrown a spanner in this cosy view of steady progress.

But we’ve been there before.

Consider the world at the turn of the last century, say 1900 to 1910. A Liberal government with a massive majority set about taxing the rich to establish the welfare state, reducing the powers of the aristocracy in the House of Lords, amid growing recognition of the right for women to participate in politics; there hadn’t been a major war in Europe for 80+ years; the Royal Navy “ruled the waves,” we were on friendly terms with Germany, which already had a welfare state and Edward VII established the Entente Cordiale with France; the British Empire ruled about two thirds of the World’s ’s population and thought it was doing them a favour by bringing “Civilisation, Christianity and Commerce” to primitive lands and peoples; railways were taking the workers away for holidays at the seaside, cars, radio and cinema were being invented, and the Americans were keeping themselves to themselves at the other side of the world.

What was not to like?

Yet for no apparent reason other than international rivalry which appeared at first to be no more than school sport-day style enthusiasm, by 1914 the world entered into the most devastating war it had experienced to that date, which continued for four years through a combination of pride and obstinacy.

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Posted in Op-eds | 7 Comments

A non-wonk’s guide to liberalism

By Rob Parsons | Thu 6th March 2025 - 12:10 pm

A while ago someone was looking for what they called a brief non-wonk’s guide to liberalism. In a fit of activism I wrote one. Once I had fleshed it out, I was surprised by the centrality the idea of debate had to my entire presentation.

The logic is quite simple. Liberalism has at its centre a broad brush of principle – that each should be free to do whatever they want provided they do not harm others in exercising that freedom. There is relatively little else that is central to the principles. That means that every strategy, position, rule or practice has to be worked out in the light of current circumstances to align as closely as possible to that principle – which means that all those practices, strategies, etc, have to be worked out anew again and again. (“When the circumstances change, I change my mind.”) That means we need to be able to talk to each other continuously and honestly, and yet sensitively and with respect.

It takes quite a lot of self discipline to do that. No doubt many would argue that we have lost that ability – social media, echo chambers, the weaponisation of lies, the practice of bullshit. I do not believe that; the ability to listen and speak respectfully has to be learned anew by each generation. And that is perhaps more important for us than for other political parties because it is so central to the practice of liberalism.

Arguably, we in the Liberal Democrats are not very good at it (though we’re certainly no worse than other parties). Debate descends into argument too quickly and too often. Perhaps we need to revive the practice of teaching the skills of debate as a central part of being a Liberal Democrat, so that we can converse most productively both among ourselves and in other fora. Perhaps there could be a new section on the Campaign Hub. (Yes, I’m being a bit mischievous, but only a bit.)

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Posted in Op-eds | 24 Comments

Our responsibility – Reform can and must be defeated

By Geoff Reid | Tue 24th December 2024 - 12:55 pm

While a cautious Labour government is worrying about former Labour voters who moved to Reform UK at the General Election and Conservatives are split between those who see the Faragists as friends and those who see them as enemies., Liberal Democrats have a clear moral responsibility to fight them hard and defeat them.

Much has been written about the exploitation of grievances fuelling far right advances on both sides of the Atlantic and within the EU. While we have to take seriously the hurts many are experiencing and the sense of lostness in the face of collapsing public services which threatens civil society, we have to overcome the divisive hate-mongers. Labour say this is their mission but they have strange ways of showing it. So it’s up to us.

In the pre-Christmas weeks the Yorkshire and the Humber Region explicitly encouraged members and supporters to get stuck into a run of local by-elections saying “Reform is spreading divisive rhetoric and we’re working hard to offer a better vision for our communities”.

There was an interesting sequence of results.

On 28th November we had a shock gain in Woodhouse, Sheffield with a 10 vote margin over Reform and Labour pushed into third place.
Also on 28th a strong Lib Dem defence in York gave us three times the vote of the Tory in second place. Reform came third with Labour fourth.
On 12th December Reform took a seat from Labour in Merseyside (with no Lib Dem candidate). Meanwhile in West and South Yorkshire Reform failed to take seats in Featherstone, Wakefield and Dodworth, Barnsley. Labour held Featherstone but a large increase in the Lib Dem vote pushed Reform into third place. In Dodworth a strong Lib Dem hold secured twice as many votes as Reform with Labour in third place.

In some respects we have been here before. In 2006 the BNP came within a hundred votes of taking the Eccleshill, Bradford seat, which a few years later I was to represent on the City Council. We were determined to push them back. In 2007 it was not difficult to persuade voters that the Lib Dems were best placed to defeat the far right and we had a good track record to show that we could offer something much, much better. With people who usually voted for other parties coalescing around the Lib Dem candidate we had our biggest ever margin of victory. We secured nearly twice as many votes as the BNP in second place with Labour third.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured and reform | 27 Comments

Opportunism is addictive for political parties. Liberals must resist

By Ben Wood | Tue 3rd December 2024 - 3:07 pm

Since our stunning victories back in July, something has been gnawing away at me: Who are we in the LibDems for? Talk to any LibDem activist and you will likely hear the following: Liberalism is about the ordinary citizen against concentrations of power, stultifying social conformity and unjustified privilege. The same activists will often say that Liberalism champions equality of opportunity, human diversity, material justice and civil participation. But throughout 2024, the messaging around Liberal Democrat identity has been troublingly murky. Back in the summer, Ed Davey gave voice to a vision of centre-left liberalism in his New Statesman …

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Posted in Op-eds | 55 Comments

The Lib Dems must welcome Flat Earthers

By Lib Dem Flat Earth Society | Sat 28th September 2024 - 10:30 am

One would be forgiven for thinking that a liberal party should be a bastion of free speech, open to people from all political backgrounds. Sadly, this is not the case; it is plainly obvious that Flat Earther Lib Dems are being silenced.

We, the Lib Dem Flat Earth Society, are a group of Liberal Democrat members seeking to promote free speech, evidence-based policy, skepticism and respectful debate surrounding the shape of Planet Earth.

We are firm believers in free speech. As all true liberals know, free speech means that Flat Earther members’ concerns must be listened to, that our motions must be accepted at conference (regardless of the overwhelming wishes of our round-earth cultist membership), and that our elected Lib Dem representatives must take seriously everything we say. These inalienable rights are being denied to us.

Our cause is not ‘offensive’, ‘discriminatory’ or ‘completely insane’ as our round-earth cultist opponents claim. The Lib Dem Flat Earth Society merely seeks to question the current ideology-driven (un)scientific ‘consensus’ around the shape of the earth. And what are these lines of questioning met with? Rage, ridicule and outright censorship.

This is not the way a so-called ‘liberal’ party should treat people with serious and valid concerns about the shape of the planet. The preamble of our party’s constitution declares that we seek to build a society in which “no-one is enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity”; yet our members are expected time and time again to conform with nonsensical ideological claims about the shape of the Earth.

Our question is simple: is it really so outlandish to believe that shady, powerful figures in the British ‘space’ industry have sought to mislead ordinary people like me and you? Do you side with the wealthy, unspecified figures who censor anyone who dares question whether the earth is a sphere (why, then, do we not fall off?), or do you side with us ordinary men and women who simply seek to promote healthy debate on the topic? Many of these anti-disc diehards even deny the evidence that we can plainly see with our very own eyes: that the sky is a glass dome and the stars are painted onto it.

Why is the horizon always at eye level? Why can I not see the curvature of the earth, even when I am flying to Flat Earth conventions funded by ordinary, concerned citizens? Why is my OS map flat? If the earth is “rotating”, as the round-earth conspiracy theorists would have you believe, then why can’t I feel it moving?

These are all difficult questions that round-earthist bullies like Mark Pack and Ed Davey flat-out (see what I did there) refuse to answer. Luckily for us, bastions of liberalism such as The Daily Express and The Telegraph are willing to support us by studiously documenting every time a Flat Earther has been personally slighted by the party.

Many of our flat earther colleagues will know all too well the nasty authoritarianism used to silence dissenting voices. Flat Earther candidates being deselected; party higher-ups speaking out against us at conference; our very own MPs spreading round-earthist conspiracy theories at the behest of shady Globe-ist organisations and wealthy vested interests (globe salesmen, Big Science, Google Earth, the Illuminati, NASA, lizardmen from outer space). The round-earth radicals screeching at us on X would not exist were it not for these shady organisations.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged lib dem flat earth society | Comments Off

Your freedom is my freedom: Remembering our distinctive philosophy

By Ben Wood | Thu 19th September 2024 - 12:19 pm

One of the unalloyed pleasures of the 2024 Election Campaign was speaking to friends about policies, which, it seemed to me, represented the very best of us as a Party. We called for a fair contribution from the energy companies, Social Media giants, and higher rate taxpayers to repair our mental health services and social care system while strengthening the safety net for carers. We campaigned against the pollution of our beloved waterways, the diminution of the Health Service, and threw our weight behind a national strategy to tackle the often-invisible blight of loneliness.

However, something niggled at me throughout the Campaign: How do we draw our policies and positions together into a coherent whole? After all parties are not just shopping lists of policies, they embody traditions of thought and feeling which transcend the electoral cycle. I was left thinking: What are we trying to say cumulatively about our Party and the society of which our movement is part? It seems to me that the Manifesto was a beginning in answering some of these questions, but the existential query of ‘what we’re for’ still feels unsatisfactorily blurry, even after all the stunning electoral victories in July.

What do we need to do in order to weave our policies together? The answer it seems to me lies in renewing our distinctive Liberal Democrat understanding of freedom.

In a powerful article from December 2022, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams argued that the thing that most blights contemporary Britain is endemic social insecurity. People are going hungry, millions of jobs in the economy are failing to meet basic financial needs, individuals, families and communities are struggling to keep their heads above water. Williams dusts off a slogan from the Covid-19 pandemic, ‘No one is safe until everyone is safe’ and asks us to apply it to the economy. What would it mean if we adopted a systematic understanding of communal security? The answer, thinks Williams, is that we would end up with a more expansive vision of acting and choosing.

As Williams writes:

It is not just that insecurity literally threatens lives; it is also that all those things financial security makes possible – the freedom to celebrate, to plan for your children, to give gifts to people you love – become monstrously complicated. Living with any fullness or imagination recedes over the horizon when choices are all about survival.

Williams’ point is helpful for Liberal Democrats as we navigate this new Parliament and its choices and trade-offs. For us Liberty has always been about the safety to live and care in community. This is where we differ so drastically from Trussite Libertarians and orthodox Thatcherites. We cherish the freedom to love and care, give and create, imagine, and yes, make our lives gloriously complicated. Not everything can or should be reduced to the bottom-line. Liberty should never be narrowed down to personal earning-power, property-rights, tax cuts, or consumer goods.

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Defending Liberalism against illiberalism

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 11th September 2024 - 2:30 pm

Liberals are naturally optimistic and reasonable. We recognise the past struggles to establish open, tolerant societies, the rule of law and accountable government, but too easily assume that those battles have been won. In the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the most optimistic Liberals thought we were entering a post-conflict liberal world.

It’s now clear that the principles of a liberal political and economic order have to be defended against multiple threats. Our society has become far more socially liberal than our grandparents; but not all are persuaded, and illiberal groups within Britain and outside are doing their best to reverse what has been won. Our economy is deeply integrated into a global economy which is unstable, grossly unequal and environmentally unsustainable. Corruption and crime are embedded in the global economy, and spill over into the UK; we have seen some painful examples of domestic corruption in recent years. Political liberalism – liberal democracy – is on the defensive, across Europe and Asia, within the USA and within Britain itself.

Behind our immediate relief at the disappearance of populist Conservative government, British politics is in a volatile state. Popular alienation from Westminster is at the highest level yet recorded in surveys. Local democracy has been shrunk and weakened through successive reorganisations, increasing central control and reductions in funding. The Labour government has won a massive parliamentary majority on 33.7% of the popular vote, with under 60% of voters turning out – and with efficient targeting by all parties leaving many constituencies without any visible local campaign. There are now 10 groups in the Commons with 4 or more MPs; yet Labour and the Tories are still acting as if Britain has a two-party system. It’s possible that the next election will see right-wing reaction against Labour constitute a major political force. Reform won 14% in July from almost a standing start.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged authoritarianism and featured | 12 Comments

Wednesday Debate: What do you think of Governments’ plans to ban a generation from buying cigarettes?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 31st January 2024 - 9:17 am

It’s Summer 2049. Peter and his friend Mark are doing their weekly shop in Morrisons.

They stop at the cigarette kiosk on the way out. Peter, born on 31 December 2008, shows his compulsory ID card to prove that he is old enough to buy tobacco products. Mark, born just a day later has never been legally allowed to buy them. Instead, he gets them from various sources, including a dodgy bloke down the pub. Every year, he hires a van and hops over to France to fill it up with an unhealthy supply to keep him going for a few months, paying duty to the French Government rather than the UK Government.

All of this assumes, of course, that we aren’t doing our shopping via Elon Musk’s chips implanted in our brains, but never mind.

In a rare move, this week Governments across the UK announced a plan to prohibit anyone born after 1 January 2009 from ever buying cigarettes. I don’t think any of us think it is ok for a 15 year old to buy cigarettes. But do we really want a situation where 40 year old Mark is legally prevented from doing what 40 year old Peter does legally?

Health charities and organisations are delighted at the Government’s plans. Of course they are, because reducing smoking is obviously going to improve public health. They are doing their job.

The British Heart Foundation’s Chief Executive, on their website, said:

When we have known for many decades that smoking kills, it is utterly unacceptable that smoking continues to take so many lives, causing at least 15,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease every year across the UK.

“On top of this, smoking is a significant driver of health inequalities, disproportionately affecting the health of the poorest in society.

“Tough measures are needed to put a stop to this ongoing heartbreak, and we welcome the UK Government’s bold proposal to create a smoke-free generation by raising the age of sale for tobacco every year.

“It’s right that the Government is taking action to make vaping less appealing. Children and people who have never smoked should never start vaping, which is why we need effective measures that make it harder for young people to buy vapes in the first place.

“There is clear public support for this Bill and we now urge every MP to support this once-in-a-generation legislation when it is brought to the UK Parliament. We hope to see this policy adopted by administrations across the UK.

So what should the Liberal Democrats be saying about this? As a liberal party we hold personal freedom for adults to do things, even if they harm themselves, as a core value. I have to say that I’m surprised that the proposals put forward by three Governments who spend most of their time rolling their eyes at each other have been accepted with so little controversy. Only a few voices, such as our controversial ex Prime Minister Liz Truss, have spoken out, calling the measures “un-Conservative.”

This is one of these issues where you can use liberal principles to reach either conclusion in the debate. You can argue that the health of a generation is more important and that smoking rarely harms just the person doing it and that this measure is important to stop deaths which are entirely preventable.

On the other hand, we know that prohibition rarely works. In the example above, Mark has found ways of obtaining his cigarettes. What is likely to happen is that there will be a flourishing underground market in tobacco products for those who don’t or can’t head across to Europe to replenish their supplies.

As a party, we have long argued for the decriminalisation of Cannabis. Surely supporting this measure would be inconsistent.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured, harm principle, smoke free generation and smoking | 49 Comments

The Lib Dems (and Labour) could learn from Russell T Davies

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 26th November 2023 - 9:52 pm

Christine Jardine wrote about the 60th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination earlier this week. The day after, 23rd November, marked 60 years since the first episode of Doctor Who was broadcast.

For me, ever since the very first episode I watched in 1974, it’s been a constant source of joy, inspiration, curiosity and adrenaline rushes. There seems to be quite an affinity between Lib Dems and Doctor Who. We identify with a socially awkward eccentric travelling through time and space saving peoples and worlds and universes, a lot of the time from themselves.

Last night marked a new era for the show. Or, more accurately, a reboot of one of the most successful ones. Russell T Davies is back as head writer and has reunited much of the team who brought the show back so brilliantly in 2005. Much as I love the Doctor and all his companions, it simply hasn’t been as good since RTD left in 2009.

David Tennant, the first actor to return for a second stint as the Doctor is reunited with Catherine Tate who played his last regular companion, Donna Noble. The way her character developed over 13 episodes was outstanding, but then the Doctor, against her will, wiped her memory to save her life.

Russell T Davies really knows how to play with your emotions and not just in Doctor Who. In the drama It’s a Sin, he just breaks you as he contrasts the horrendous cruelty of discrimination against people with HIV and AIDS with the love and support of friends.

Last night’s Star Beast had plenty tugs on your heartstrings. Joy, apprehension, fear, optimism, love, the fierce, protective love of a mother for her daughter being just a few. The one thing he is not is subtle. You are in no doubt about what he is saying, and those of us on the progressive side of politics could learn a lot from him.

Right wing politicians have been dividing and ruling us for too long now. They are not known for hiding their rhetoric under a bushel. Look at how Conservative politicians treat vulnerable asylum seekers, set about removing benefits from sick people who can’t work and demonise trans people because they think it is politically expedient to do so. And some of them, like Nigel Farage, do so while portraying themselves as the jokey bloke down the pub that everybody loves.

While we are on the subject of Farage, rumoured to be pocketing £1.5 million for going on I’m a Celebrity, I will never forgive Have I Got News For You for showing that clip of him naked. If you haven’t seen it, you have been warned.

Sadly, those of us who want to see a more liberal and equal society too often shy from challenging the right wing. We murmur round the edges, too timid to take them on in case we scare people from voting for us and we shrink back when the right shout at us. Even when our policies are much better, and pretty much all the time they are, we don’t use our creative skills to appeal to the better, more compassionate side of public opinion. It’s there, but it needs to be nurtured.

And every time the right go unchallenged, they pull the political agenda a little bit more over to their side. We all lose when that happens because the country becomes a nastier, unhappier place to live, particularly for those whose lives become a lot worse as a result but the toxicity affects us all.

And so back to last night’s Doctor Who. 5.1 million people saw it, the highest for the first episode of a drama this year. It was woke as hell, and much the better for it. You see, woke, explained properly, is all about making sure everyone can take part in life. It’s about kindness, generosity and seeing the best in our fellow humans. No wonder the Daily Mail hates it.

I’m wary of too many spoilers, but the joys included a TARDIS that anyone could access and a scientific adviser being given the perfect tool she needed to do her job.

It was clear from the get go that Donna Noble has a brilliant relationship with her daughter, Rose. We learn that Rose is trans, confirmed by boys from her school yelling transphobic abuse at her. Every parent will recognise the furious love Donna has for Rose in that moment. We all want to protect our children and Davies evoked that beautifully.

Russell T Davies manages to get you in the gut every time. And that’s what we need to get better at.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged doctor who, featured, politicall vision. and right wing rhetoric | 10 Comments

Don’t take freedom for granted

By Yue He Parkinson | Fri 6th October 2023 - 10:03 am

I attended the fringe meeting titled “Is International Liberalism dying? Persuading the world that the future is liberal” in the Autumn conference. One panel member expressed a sentence like this: “The reason the Global South countries are not cooperative with the West is so-called Liberal Imperialism.”

Coming from one of Global South countries – China – 19 years ago, I knew different answers, which could be the more realistic ones, yet have rarely been noticed by the West. Thanks to Rachel Smith’s encouragement, I raised my hand up for the first time in this conference, and got the attention of host Christine Jardine MP, to ask: “I am a British Chinese. I took 18 years to learn what freedom is after I moved here in 2004. The West has taken freedom for granted, my question is – Do the South counties who don’t know much about freedom have rights to pursue global fairness? ”

There were a few of the audience who gave me applause, yet stopped immediately, because of no more echoes. My question didn’t get well received from the panels, the one who answered my question said: “Your question is not what we are talking about.” Yet from what I have seen, her attitude was exactly the problem – Western have taken democracy and freedom for granted.

When I studied International Relations at the University of Bristol, there are two major theories – Realism and Liberalism. The latter is based on the principle of individual liberalism in our party, and was the leading theory representing then global positive cooperation atmosphere, economic globalization. I didn’t know Lib Dems then and thought Brits were all liberals. I corrected myself this year as I finally realized Labour and Tory both borrowed the idea of liberalism from the Lib Dems. We are the true liberals.

I am a different liberal though. I remember the first year I was in the UK; a few Brits asked me a question: ‘’Why doesn’t China have democracy?’’. The attitude was like ‘”how come you don’t have such a easy political system?”. I spent my first 30 years in China before I immigrated to the UK. I have always known how impossible it is to have freedom in China. Sometimes people asked: ‘’Why don’t your people fight?’’. I was speechless, at that time I was equipped with a 1.0 generation (1.0 G) of immigrants’ mindset (Mainland Chinese mindset, I set Brits’ mindset as 2.0 G), had never been educated about civil society, never known what human rights are truly about, let alone known about campaign action, all of which took me about 20 years to learn, until today.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged china and global south | 3 Comments

Reflections after a Conference – a challenge to the Lib Dems

By Michael Taylor | Wed 28th June 2023 - 8:22 am

Editor’s Note: Mick wrote this piece after the Brighton Conference in 2018 and sent it to me recently as he felt it was still relevant today. Apart from the fact that Brexit is now an (at least for now) inescapable reality, he’s right. We need to be radical and punchy to deliver the liberal, fair, more equal society that we want to see. I’m reminded of the Liberal not Moderate t-shirts that some of us wore proudly around that Conference…

After a short period at the Lib Dem conference I am still in Brighton for a couple of days. Brighton is quite a good place to reflect on the state of the UK.

Thinking back, Brighton used to be in much better nick than it is now. Many pavements are cracked and broken, many of the houses and hotels look run down and in need of repair and renovation. The seafront is not particularly special and the West Pier is still a burned out shell. Here, in one of the UKs premier resorts, there are many homeless people on the streets and many beggars as well. Hardly the sort of Britain that we Liberal Democrats want to see!

Recycling largely takes place by means of unsightly bins strewn around the streets and the former green-run council’s recycling policies made a mockery of recycling anyway.

I suspect that much of this is the result of austerity, especially the massive cuts to the finances of the local council that no longer enable it to respond to the needs of the Brighton and Hove Community.

Brexit will hardly improve matters, because hotels and restaurants here rely heavily on European workers and they may not be available after March 2019.

Although I have no direct information, I suspect that housing is expensive and that many people, especially the young, have no hope of getting on the housing ladder and live in the private rented sector with its high prices and insecurity of tenure.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged brexit, brighton, economy and housing | 9 Comments

Labour show their true colours

By Simon McGrath | Sat 12th November 2022 - 2:30 pm

It has not been a great week for those who think Liberal Democrats will find it easy to work with a minority Labour Government or that Labour are our natural partners.

First we had Keir Starmer’s very odd comments on people working in the NHS – where he said

What I would like to see is the numbers go down in some areas. I think we’re recruiting too many people from overseas into, for example, the health service.

I have recently spent time visiting someone in hospital and was struck by what a high % of the nursing and auxiliary staff were from overseas : what a message to send to them !

Of course Starmer knows perfectly we need people from overseas to staff the NHS – this is pure dog whistle stuff designed to get a headline.

Then we have that old Labour favourite, identity cards. Labour’s last, fabulously expensive plan, for these was rightly scuppered as one of the first (and widely acclaimed ) actions of the Coalition but now revived by Stephen Kinnock who says Labour is thinking :

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged authoritarianism, id cards and labour | 23 Comments

Ed Davey interview with Tory think tank, Bright Blue

By Simon McGrath | Sun 28th August 2022 - 3:56 pm

Ed Davey has been interviewed by ‘Centre Write ’ the magazine of Bright Blue – who describe themselves as “an independent think tank for liberal conservatism. We defend and improve liberal society.”

The interview is billed as talking to Ed about “about coalitions, what it means to be a liberal, and what the future, holds for the party he leads” and Ed provides some robust answers to their questions. When asked if he regrets entering the Coalition he talks about his fighting the Tories over renewable energy – but as a result of winning those fights we have cheaper energy and lead the world in offshore wind. He doesn’t answer the question about whether he regrets us joining the Coalition but could not be clearer when asked “ Would you ever enter into a coalition with the Conservatives again?:

“The answer is no. It’s quite simple.”

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Posted in Online politics and Op-eds | Also tagged bright blue and ed davey | 3 Comments

Restating our political identity through a new liberal manifesto

By Chris Bowers | Fri 3rd December 2021 - 10:30 am

Do you remember what you were doing on the evening of 16 April 2015? The chances are you were in front of your telly, as I was, watching the seven leaders’ TV debate in the run-up to the general election. I have a distinct memory of that night: I became aware I could sum of what six of the seven parties stood for in three or four seconds, but the one I struggled with was my own party.

We must be careful not to make too much of the ‘Do people know what we stand for?’ line, as politics is more about which parties feel right and trustworthy. But in a political culture dominated by two main parties, and a media culture governed by two sides to a story, it’s very hard for a third party to create an identity in the minds of the average voter. As a result, the Lib Dems have become in many voters’ eyes a compromise between Labour and the Conservatives, an image we have not shied away from encouraging with slogans such as ‘Stronger economy, fairer society’.

But we are not a compromise, we stand for something! The problem is that what we stand for is not easily summarised, the way being pro-environment is for the Greens or being anti-EU was for Ukip. So, we need to find a way of encapsulating what we offer.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured | 59 Comments

Liberalism or Die

By Peter Wrigley | Mon 18th October 2021 - 9:25 am

The best definition Liberalism I know was spelled out by Timothy Garton Ash in a Guardian article on 29 November 2004.

Liberalism, properly understood (is) a quest for the greatest possible measure of individual freedom compatible with the freedom of others.

That’s all there is to it if we understand “freedom to” (live and eat decently, get educated, achieve our potential, participate in society, debate our differences in a respectful manner) as well as “freedom “from“ (want, fear, coercion, domination, exploitation).

We now know that Fukuyama was wrong to declare the end of history and the triumph of liberal democracy in 1989. It is virtually non-existent in China, and on the back foot in India, severely dented by continuing Trumpism in the USA and populist nationalism in parts of Eastern Europe, and our own government is systematically removing its building blocks in the UK.

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Posted in Op-eds | 22 Comments

A distinctly Liberal viewpoint

By Katharine Pindar | Fri 24th September 2021 - 9:45 am

Did our Leader Ed Davey in Conference, and can we as members on the doorsteps, explain a distinctly Liberal point of view?

Ed told us we should say that we stand for a fair deal, and are decent politicians who care about you. We perhaps confirmed that at Conference with the passage particularly of the F24 motion, A Fairer, Greener, More Caring Society, which was built on the Themes policy paper.

Liberalism is certainly not populism, but we Lib Dems do incline to believe that a large proportion of the British public share our moderate, centrist views, together with our belief that the State is needed to enable all citizens to have the chance of secure, healthy and fulfilling lives. We don’t believe in the centralised over-powerful State sought by Socialism, nor the small-state attitude of Conservatism.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured | 85 Comments

Forty words

By David Grace | Tue 20th July 2021 - 12:37 pm

Earlier this year the Social Liberal Forum Council discussed what should be its priorities. Along with the nature of work, welfare and how citizens participate in their communities there was a hunger for a vision, an underlying narrative, something that goes beyond individual, evidence-based policies about specific issues, something you might call liberal ideology. It is pretty clear that many people in the country don’t know what Liberal Democrats stand for. We hear on the doorsteps, “We like you but we’re not sure what you’re about”.

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Posted in Lib Dem organisations | Also tagged what do the liberal democrats stand for | 21 Comments

Liberalism in the United States

By Duncan Brack | Tue 29th June 2021 - 10:27 am

What is political liberalism in the United States? That’s the topic of the Liberal Democrat History Group’s next discussion meeting, at 6.30pm on Tuesday 6 July. All are welcome.

The original conception of liberalism in America was the protection of people from arbitrary power, support for the free market and advocacy of religious tolerance. Many of these concepts found their place in the American Declaration of Independence and in the constitution of the emerging United States. The Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton (who may have been surprised to find himself, 230 years later, starring in a rap musical), John Jay and James Madison are now regarded as classics of western constitutionalism, laying out the doctrine of limited government, representative democracy and federalism.

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Posted in Events | Also tagged liberal democrat history group and united states | 2 Comments

Woke or Asleep?

By Adam Jones | Thu 8th April 2021 - 12:27 pm

I think we’ve reached a very interesting phase in our UK politics.

The ‘free’ British press can write whatever they like as long as you’re willing to pay for it. Brexit Britain is a place where expats living abroad voted leave and then are very surprised when their host government asks them to do likewise; where our great fishing industry has now escaped the dreaded EU red tape, to have replaced it with more excellent British Red, White and Blue tape that is now crippling a once thriving industry.

Good job we ‘took back control’ when we did as I’m sure we would have needed Brexit for our successful vaccine roll-out, which is, incidentally probably the only real thing our incumbents have done a decent job at. Even then we only have to scratch the surface to see some have ‘jumped the queue’ and claimed to work in social care when they don’t and there has still been poor take-up in many ethnic minority communities. It’s like they don’t trust the government or something to treat minority groups fairly and with respect? I will welcome an independent enquiry to unpick these challenges in the future, but now is not the time.

My big gripe at the moment may well be down to semantics.

The idea and thought of Liberalism seems to have become a dirty word. ‘Liberal elite’ is used like a pejorative insult and the word ‘woke’ expelled with the vitriolic bile of a thousand angry ducts.

This idea of being woke is not something new. Liberal thinkers have often been labelled or abused for looking to do the ‘right thing’. This is like the latest and next in a long line of jargon created by our press gangs to cause disquiet, disillusionment and discredit those who would seek to make life more acceptable, helpful or comfortable for all. Equality if you like.

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Posted in Op-eds | 16 Comments

Defending Liberalism from the culture warriors

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 3rd March 2021 - 9:15 am

‘Democracy doesn’t happen by accident. We have to defend it. Strengthen it. Renew it.’ President Biden said that in his virtual address to the Munich Security Conference last week. He was talking explicitly about threats to Democracy across the world, but implicitly also about the threats within the United States. We should worry that liberal Democracy, open society and constitutional government are not to be taken for granted in Britain, either.

None of us should under-estimate the extent to which the US Republican Right has effectively colonised the Conservative Party. Our right-wing media takes its cue from American campaigns – on culture, free markets, ‘family values’, suspicion of government as such. Tory MPs interact with US politicians and think-tankers far more than with conservatives across the Channel. Funds flow into the UK from right-wing US foundations, companies and lobbies, supporting similar groups and promoting like-minded causes over here. The denigration of liberalism that grips the American right is echoed in London seminars on ‘post liberalism and endless attacks on Britain’s allegedly ‘metropolitan liberal elite’ – by well-connected and well-paid Conservative intellectuals who live in London themselves.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged Biden, democracy and tories | 56 Comments

Trump and Johnson: our unfortunate special relationship

By Peter Wrigley | Mon 2nd November 2020 - 11:06 am

Last Wednesday, 28th October, the Guardian ran one of its rare single topic double column Leaders devoted to an excoriating denunciation of Donald Trump and his Presidency. Here’s a selection of the words and phrases used:

leader least equipped; divided country; not…a fit and proper person; brazen disregard for legal norms; propagated lies and ignorance; cruel and mean; agenda of corporate deregulation; tax giveaways for the rich; narcissist; devastating lack of empathy; growing gap between the level of competence required… and… ability; cronies whose mob-like fealty to their boss; post shame politician; one rule for wealthy elites and another for the

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged special relationship | 3 Comments

No Rishi! The country does not share your values

By Judith Rogerson | Tue 6th October 2020 - 10:25 am

In his speech to the Tory Party conference, Rishi Sunak made a bold declaration: “We share the same values. The Conservative Party and the country.” For a start the 57% of voters who didn’t opt for the Conservatives last December will disagree. But his statement also raises a key question: what are the values that today’s Conservative Party stand for? Anyone who takes a moment to look at Johnson’s Conservatives can see that the party of statecraft, the rule of law and fiscal conservatism no longer exists.

The rest of Sunak’s speech was surprisingly brief and light on policy. One thing he did emphasise was his commitment to balancing the books. But that didn’t seem to matter when it came to getting Brexit done or when announcing huge infrastructure spending.

They say they are about law and order, but have just voted to allow themselves to break international law. And Priti Patel’s speech at the weekend advocating an escalation of the hostile environment towards those seeking asylum made clear the Conservatives aren’t a party that looks out for the most vulnerable in society.

Part of the problem for the Conservatives is their own internal ideological divisions. On the one hand they have a raft of MPs in solidly safe seats who keep their heads down in public and quietly do as they are told, willingly voting for the Government every time. Some of these types also come from Lib Dem facing not-so-safe seats where their bacon was saved by Nigel Farage standing down his Brexit Party troops.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged conservatives, populism and rishi sunak | 12 Comments

LibLink: Malcolm Bruce – Why a polarised world is in need of Liberals

By NewsHound | Sun 20th September 2020 - 5:01 pm

Writing in the Press and Journal this week, Malcolm Bruce argued that liberals are an essential and critical part of the fightback against the polarised world we find ourselves in.

Much of society has degenerated into angry, polarised camps, brooking no compromise and demanding people conform to their woke identity slogans or resign themselves to being the “enemy”.

This is not the stuff of a civilised society. It prevents genuine exchange of views. Evidence is discarded in favour of fake news and alternative facts, leading to rash decisions.

He wonders why the other parties are so vicious in their attitude towards us:

In an ever-more complex, challenging and divided world, once-great parties are offering simplistic, irrational, glib solutions. By the same token, the political debate has sought either to trash the Liberal Democrats or sneer at their irrelevance – displaying uncertainty of intent. Why are other parties so splenetic about the Liberal Democrats? My guess is it is because we get in the way of simplistic, hardline, ideological identity politics.

Liberal Democrats believe in the freedom of individuals to express themselves in their own way, free from pressure to conform. We celebrate diversity and pluralism in an electoral system that has the deliberate intention of forcing people into camps.

He says that there is another way:

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Posted in News | Also tagged malcolm bruce and press and journal | 6 Comments

The radical centre needs a new story

By Sophie Kitching | Thu 3rd September 2020 - 5:07 pm

You only need to read the comments on any news coverage that we happen to get to see the problem. We’re so used to the jokes that we are often the first to make them, pre-empting the inevitable. “The Lib Dems are wishy-washy centrists. They sit on the fence, stand for nothing, and betray their principles at the first hint of power. They’re irrelevant. Being a Lib Dem is just a marginally more socially acceptable front to being a Tory.”

We are not good at selling the story of liberalism.

Shocking as it may seem to some of us, voters don’t go through manifestos with a fine-toothed comb, weighing up to merits of each and every policy before coming to a decision. People vote based on ideas. The left owns equality, health and social care and education. The right is the home of the economy, of business, of the free-market. If we call ourselves left-wing social liberals, why aren’t we Labour? If we find ourselves more to the right, why aren’t we Conservatives?

And at both extremes, we find politicians willing to listen to our anger and our concerns and provide us with people to blame. It’s a simple, attractive narrative; you’ve lost your job because there are too many immigrants. If we send them ‘home’, then everything will be okay again. Alternatively, maybe it’s big business at fault?

Both the left and the right offer solutions offer visions of a better future. We need to find out who we are, and communicate to voters what we want from the world. To a certain extent, ‘Stop Brexit’ did this. We were offering something distinct from the other parties, and at least for a while, polling rewarded us for it (remember when we were above Labour?). Yet defining ourselves on a single issue like Brexit will never work as a long-term recruitment strategy.

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Posted in Op-eds | 21 Comments

Britain needs a Liberal party, let’s make sure there’s still one left

By Tom Morrison | Mon 10th August 2020 - 3:35 pm

At the time of writing this, we have 17 days left of the leadership election and here is my confession: I cannot wait for it to be done.

Whilst we have two fantastic candidates standing for us, you would think from the comments being slung around by some members on social media that there is some vast ideological difference between the two.

I had the pleasure of chairing Liberal Reform’s Leadership Q&A this weekend and really enjoyed the debate. We discussed everything from nationalisation to the housing crisis, from party structure to the Orange Book.

And you know what? There was very little …

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Posted in Op-eds | 26 Comments

The geopolitics of COVID-19: Can liberalism win the day?

By George Cunningham | Fri 31st July 2020 - 3:42 pm

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The pandemic is an unprecedented global challenge affecting all humanity, which is suffering the consequences at very considerable social and economic cost.

The world was already in disorder before COVID-19 made its appearance but the crisis has undoubtedly deepened the great power rivalry between China and the U.S., aggravated by a far-reaching trade war starting sometime before the pandemic hit.

Trust in international systems of cooperation have been impacted. Although coordination is better right now, and concrete initiatives are underway to try and ensure that the eventual vaccine is a global public good for health, the scramble between countries to be first to have their populations vaccinated will sorely test the world’s ability to cooperate together again.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged Covid-19 | 6 Comments

On cancel culture

By Matt Harwood | Thu 16th July 2020 - 9:53 am

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A tenet of the liberal standpoint is freedom of speech and ideas – that debate with reasoned arguments is essential to progress and democratic participation. This seems to be a view that is being tested with what many call the “culture wars” of the moment, centred around racism (historic and current), as well as trans rights.

The charge is that activists on various sides look to deny people with opposing views the opportunity to express them. From pressuring institutions to cancel speakers, to hounding the opposition off Twitter, impassioned campaigners are trying to redraw the boundaries of what is acceptable and “up for debate”, and what is beyond discussion.

As liberals, where is that line drawn? And, further, is it OK for that line to be moved with the prevailing culture?

My gut reaction to debate being closed down is that it is unhealthy to do so when looking at the overall benefit to society. A free market of ideas is what helps us get to a better place, to make progress. But it’s only fair to test that – what would I feel uncomfortable about encouraging a debate about? Can I imagine allowing, as an extreme example, a pro/anti debate on paedophilia on a University campus?

To be honest, I can’t. To allow the suggestion that both sides would have a 50/50 split of credence would not seem reasonable. My criteria here isn’t the law (it should be perfectly acceptable to argue something should be legal), it’s the severity of disgust and opposition to the ‘motion’ I feel. Is this a good basis for trying to deny someone avenues to talk about their point of view?

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Posted in Op-eds | 27 Comments