Liberal Democrat Voice

Liberalism must mean something again

By Stephen O'Brien | Fri 3rd July 2026 - 5:06 pm

I have been a Liberal Democrat, and part of the wider liberal tradition, for my entire adult life. I believe there has rarely been a more important time for liberal politics to be at the forefront of British public life.

Yet too often, our party seems more comfortable talking about blocking 16 and 17-year-olds from social media than trusting the same young people we have long argued should have the right to vote.

That matters.

Liberalism is not meant to be timid. It is not meant to chase every passing moral panic. It is not meant to dress itself up as small-c social conservatism in the hope that people who do not share our values might suddenly decide to vote for us. They will not. Worse than that, it risks alienating the very people who naturally look to a liberal party for leadership, courage and principle.

In 2024, the Liberal Democrats got the campaign right. We returned to Parliament in significant numbers, and that achievement should not be dismissed. It was a remarkable electoral success.

But what have we done with it?

We have gone from being a party that once had a huge impact on British politics to one that too often seems willing to support almost anything if it gets a cheap headline. For a party with our history, that is not good enough.

We are the party of Gladstone, Lloyd George, Grimond, Ashdown and the long liberal tradition of reform, liberty, internationalism and individual freedom. Yet today, too many people remember us less for bold liberal ideas and more for stunts. That should worry every single one of us.

For me, the problem is simple: we are missing the moment, and in doing so we are forgetting our purpose.

The Liberal Democrats should be the party of liberalism. That means defending civil liberties, trusting individuals, challenging the overreach of the state, standing up for democratic reform, protecting human rights, and being radical where the country needs radical answers.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged liberalism | 4 Comments

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Andy Burnham has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to renew British democracy. He should take it.

By Roz Savage MP | Thu 2nd July 2026 - 5:37 pm

On Monday I had lunch with an American friend who was visiting London. I mentioned that later that day I was co-sponsoring an event in Parliament with Labour MP Clive Lewis on the subject of defending UK democracy.

Her expression changed immediately. “Please,” she said, “learn from us.”

She wasn’t talking about Donald Trump as an individual. She was talking about what has happened to the institutions of American democracy over the past few years, especially in the 18 months of Trump 2.0.

“We assumed the system would protect itself. We assumed there would always be enough guardrails. We assumed no one would really push it that far.” Then she paused. “Please don’t let our pain have been in vain.”

We need to look across the Atlantic, and pay heed. Because I fear we sometimes comfort ourselves with exactly the same assumptions. Britain, we tell ourselves, is different. Our institutions are older. Our democracy is stronger. Our traditions will protect us.

But democracies are not self-defending. They need rules and structures that don’t assume only good people acting in good faith, but can withstand bad actors willing to exploit every weakness they can find.

That was the central message of the Defensive Constitutional Reform report that was the basis of our panel discussion on Monday night. It argues that Britain has relied for too long on what Peter Hennessy famously called the “good chaps” theory of government: the comforting assumption that those who attain power will generally exercise it responsibly. In an era of disinformation, billionaire influence, hostile foreign interference and growing political polarisation, that assumption no longer looks sufficient.

Rebuilding trust in democracy

Last week, I argued that first-past-the-post is no longer simply unfair. It is becoming dangerous.

This week I want to ask a different question. If we agree our democracy needs strengthening, how should we go about it?

The answer matters because we are living through a profound crisis of confidence in politics itself. Too many people no longer believe their voice matters. Too many feel governments are imposed upon them rather than chosen by them. Too many look at Westminster and conclude that politics is something done by elites, for elites.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged andy burnham and electoral reform | 20 Comments

Why the Lib Dem Defence Bonds plan is a bad idea

By Nick Baird | Thu 2nd July 2026 - 2:00 pm

The recent (and long overdue) release of the UK’s Defence Investment Plan (DIP) has only intensified the long-running debate about how to fund an increase in the UK Defence Budget, a debate that has already cost the Labour Government two Ministers. Cursory examination of the Government’s plans soon revealed that rather than being “fully funded”, the plan actually requires a further £4.7bn of cuts to other departments and £10.7bn of “efficiency savings” in the next 4 years, neither of which have yet been identified. It also fails to provide any budget for 2030 onwards, with that can kicked down the road for the next Prime Minister.

In January of this year, Ed Davey announced our solution to the problem – Defence Bonds (https://www.libdems.org.uk/press/release/ed-davey-calls-for-defence-bonds-to-fund-pound20bn-boost-to-military-spending-and-reduce-reliance-on-us), a policy announced without consultation or debate within the Party. This plan proposes raising £20bn over 2 years, ring-fenced for defence capital spending, to “give ordinary people the opportunity to contribute to Britain’s security”.

In my opinion, this plan is both a bad way to fund defence, and also won’t work. For background, I spent over 30 years working in the defence industry, the last 20 of those as a Director and part-owner of a manufacturing SME. I lived with the daily challenges of budgeting and planning, and in that time experienced both the best and worst of UK defence procurement. While I enjoyed the dubious “pleasure” of being a supplier on the infamous Ajax armoured vehicle programme, it’s important to note that despite the bad press UK defence procurement is not all bad. I was also directly involved in numerous projects where the MOD and industry worked together to achieve amazing results, delivered quickly and on budget, that saved lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

My first objection is that a short, sharp injection of £20bn over two years is not nearly as helpful as it might sound. What the MOD, and just as importantly industry, needs is the certainty of a long term (10+ year) cash budget to plan against. Uncertainty leads to inefficiency, and suddenly throwing £20bn at the MOD would lead to some terrible outcomes. The MOD would of course do its level best to spend that money, because it would fear any under-spend getting clawed back by the Treasury. But as we have seen before during the Pandemic, when the Government tries to spend a lot of money quickly it leads to failure, waste and fraud. While some good, innovative solutions might be funded, it would also act as a honeypot to every snake-oil salesman with a glossy powerpoint and no track-record.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged defence bonds | 16 Comments

Vince Cable writes: Manchesterism and Localism

By Vince Cable | Wed 1st July 2026 - 2:55 pm

Andy Burnham’s launch speech in Manchester raised hopes of a sustained plan to devolve power away from Whitehall. If the reality matches the rhetoric, that will be a massive achievement and will greatly improve our system of governance.

But any Liberal Democrat who has been battling for decades for genuine local, community-based decision making and against the infantilisation of local government is entitled to some scepticism. My own formative experience is somewhat different: serving in the Coalition Cabinet which first launched the idea of devolving powers to elected mayors for city-regions broadly on the London model (prompted by a report for the Coalition by Michael Heseltine) ; and having earlier served as a – then, Labour – City Councillor in Glasgow) in the early 1970’s, before Scottish devolution, and when councils had serious powers (inter alia, we could appoint head teachers, build council houses and set the rents).

The fundamental idea that decisions by public. authorities should be made as close as possible to local communities – subsidiarity- is not in dispute. As a leading force in local government- and, at times, the leading force, Liberal Democrats have sought to apply that principle and have often tried to devolve further to lower, ward, levels. But they have been swimming against the tide of gradual centralisation as successive governments have stripped away local powers in the interests of a national ideology or of financial control. As a result, we are highly centralised (and especially so in England after substantial devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland).

Devolution of power is not the same thing as decentralisation or relocation. Various governments have despatched government departments to the provinces to be administered locally. Under the Boris Johnson administration, Darlington became a northern outpost of government. Andy Burnham envisages some Cabinet Office activities being based in Manchester. In the day, I recall advocating the relocation of the Treasury to Liverpool as a means of shifting thinking regionally. But none of these approaches empower people in towns and cities outside London.

There is an important distinction between devolution of power to spend central government tax revenue on local priorities and fiscal autonomy with responsibility for local revenue raising. British devolution is largely the former albeit with very limited (income) tax raising powers for the Scottish and Welsh governments. There is nothing like the revenue raising responsibility of Danish local government or German Lander, let alone US states and, so far, city mayors have none. Arguably, city mayors have become popular- or at least unobjectionable – precisely because they can spend without having to tax, though spending discretion is better than none.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged andy burnham, devolution and localism | 1 Comment

William Wallace writes: What do Liberal Democrats have to offer the “left behind”?

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 1st July 2026 - 12:55 pm

Regional redistribution from the wealthy South-East to Britain’s poorer cities, towns and villages is a sensitive issue for Liberal Democrats. When Britain left the EU and English regions and the devolved nations lost their share of EU regional funding (part of the balancing gains to the UK that the Leave campaign successfully ignored) the imbalance of investment and funding between the wealthy south-east and the rest of the UK tipped further. Boris Johnson breezily promised to ‘level up’ the country, raising expectations that were shattered when he failed to follow through. Andy Burnham may be more serious about reviving our poorer regions, and we as Liberal Democrats will have to respond carefully.

I have had a number of difficult arguments with colleagues in the party about this over the years. Liberal Democrats are above all local champions, standing up for neglected communities within the areas they represent. When I and others have argued for larger regional transfers MPs and councillors have reminded us of the pockets of poverty in north and east London, Kent, Somerset and beyond. Our parliamentary party spreads broadly across southern England, but sadly has few champions yet for Lancashire, Yorkshire or the North-East. We’ve already heard some champions of London – not in our own party – protesting that ‘taking money from London’ would be a betrayal of Londoners’ interests. It’s hard for some of our own to resist similar responses.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured, lancashire, left behind, regional redistribution and yorkshire | 14 Comments

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Battling Burnham: a Liberal Democrat response

By John Armah | Wed 1st July 2026 - 11:15 am

From Gladstone and Home Rule, Grimond and Regionalism, Ashdown and Devolution and even Daisy’s plan to move the Treasury,decentralising the British state has always been a Liberal Democrat ambition. Glad to see Andy Burnham and the Labour Party are finally catching up. The right’s Brexit warcry of Take Back Control can be repelled like a skilled Jiu-Jitsu practitioner and transformed from scapegoating minorities to truly rebalancing our country.

However in our algorithm-driven age, the British people are unfamiliar with our approach to place, devolution,federalism or electoral reform. As Mark Carney has told us ‘Nostalgia is not a strategy! We must regain the initiative on the devolution debate and expose Labour’s belief in the State being the answer with a more considered approach. Modern politics is a battle of stories and we need to become better storytellers because we have a great story to tell.

While we should welcome Burnham’s conversion, we should push him to make truly meaningful change. Metro Mayoralties and Combined Authorities face a democratic deficit with only the Mayors facing their entire regional electorate. London is a better model with a London-wide Assembly and elected Mayor. For English regions from the South East to the North West to the Senedd and Scottish Parliament, it is time to devolve all domestic policy to regional assemblies with elected First Ministers and tax-raising powers.

Let Westminster set minimum standards but the regions and nations decide what their NHS, Health and Social Care, Housing and Infrastructure policy should look like. English Regional Assemblies will require a smaller Westminster focused on national taxation, foreign affairs and defence and finally an elected Upper House under a reformed voting system. But why should the British people care?

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged andy burnham, devolution and london | 9 Comments

Burnham, co-ops, and Grimond: my thoughts

By Jack Meredith | Wed 1st July 2026 - 9:36 am

“If people in 1844 could form the co-operative movement… to lower the price of food, then why can’t we now…?”

This is an extract from Andy Burnham’s speech at the People’s History Museum in Manchester, in which he partially laid out his economic vision for Britain, focused on social democracy and cooperativism, or more specifically, “Manchesterism“.

Now, I’m not going to do a deep dive into Burnham’s achievements and drawbacks as Mayor, as I’m sure someone else can do a much better job than me on that. But what I do want to draw attention to is how Andy Burnham managed to introduce an idea, supported by a bastion of British liberalism and former Liberal Party leader Jo Grimond, much more effectively than we have for a long while: the transition from discussing power in terms of public and private ownership to social ownership.

Among other things, Grimond was a strong advocate for worker cooperatives and employee co-ownership, championing them as a sort of “third-way” between state socialism and unregulated free-market capitalism. And while the Liberal Democrats aren’t necessarily against these ideas, we have allowed our vocal support for them to fall by the wayside over the last few years. I, myself, like to talk a lot about the need for more cooperatives, mutuals and social enterprises in our society, so to hear Andy Burnham talk about the movement in such a positive light did bring a smile to my face, even more so that it seems he plans on making cooperativism a big part of his governing style.

With all that said, I have to ask: what about us? Aside from cooperatives, Burnham also spoke about the need for federalism, something we also believe in, and in his book “Head North”, he discusses the need for proportional representation and replacing the House of Lords with a Senate of Nations and Regions, not too dissimilar to our stance, either. Granted, he didn’t speak about these issues, which does raise the question as to whether he’s actually going to go through with them once in power, but it’s interesting nonetheless to notice the overlap between us and Burnham; there’s arguably more in common between us than there is between him and the current Labour Party.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged co-operatives and devolution | 4 Comments

The Climate Clock Is Ticking: Reflections from the International Seminar on Culture and Climate Change at Somerset House last Friday

By Christian de Vartavan | Tue 30th June 2026 - 8:34 pm

Thanks to a Brazilian friend, I had the opportunity to attend the International Seminar on Culture and Climate Change, which took place on Friday afternoon at Somerset House in London.

The event was organised by several institutions, including a department of my alma mater, UCL’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, and was attended by His Excellency Antonio Patriota, Ambassador of Brazil (pictured speaking above). Given last week’s heatwave, the seminar took place in a particularly warm room, with a humid atmosphere that created an almost symbolic reminder of the Amazon rainforest, which was central to many of the discussions.

The central theme of the seminar was the recognition of the inseparable — yet still insufficiently understood — relationship between culture and climate change, and the need to involve local Indigenous communities because of their deep ancestral knowledge of nature and ecosystems.

Some of the strongest arguments in support of this approach were expressed by the multi-award-winning founder of the aforementioned UCL department, Professor Mariana Mazzucato CBE, both during her speech and in the latest Policy Brief No. 36, published this month, a copy of which I was fortunate enough to obtain. The publication concludes with several key recommendations that policymakers, including the Liberal Democrats, should carefully consider:

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged climate change and culture | 1 Comment

The state we’re in – musings from a new young member

By Dennis Delice | Tue 30th June 2026 - 4:40 pm

The desire for a sense of control is a deeply futile effort, because despite being individuals, we find ourselves in a social paradigm, shaped by what is beyond our control – for example, where we are born. The person we grow into is also often a product of their environment, often not only inheriting their parents’ genes, but also their ideas and mannerisms. We are all woven in a tapestry of human experience, for we were not born in the wilderness and raised by wolves, without any social contact.

In our growingly atomised age, where our identities are now less bound to our nationality and class as they used to be but increasingly linked to our protected characteristics, conservative backlash bears electoral fruit. It is therefore no longer surprising that in developed countries, we vote not in economic terms, but primarily social now – previously hardened identities of old, such as class or gender, become blurred and less well-defined. This leads to a mismatch between increasingly academic and arbitrary language and lived experiences, which far too often translates as resentment towards liberalism, which feels moralising and detached. For example, Labour struggles with capturing the working-class vote, whilst the Conservatives have lost their affluent but socially liberal support. The left-right axis is becoming ineffective at describing political persuasions as Reform voters are ambivalent on economics, yet hardcore on social conservatism. The floor for liberalism has opened as an alternative, but communicating it without alienating people, as progressives did during the Brexit vote, is key.

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Posted in Op-eds | 5 Comments

Can “Manchesterism” work for our rural communities?

By Ray Georgeson | Tue 30th June 2026 - 1:00 pm

Here we are again, with the body politic latching on to another -ism that lacks definition yet carries allure for those of us desperate to see devolution and real localism really spring into life. I say this as a Mancunian now resident in the Scottish Borders, so perhaps you can forgive my instinctive pleasure at the notion of Manchesterism.

When, as Andy Burnham pointed out in his gently jocular manner, even the Mayor of Liverpool was applauding when he said “This is Manchesterism” when setting out his first policy platform, you know that something is happening.

Pleasure at the notion of Manchesterism is one thing, but what does it mean in reality? At the very least, Andy Burnham has managed to kickstart a fresh debate on devolution, and it gives Liberal Democrats the chance to sharpen our ideas and contribute to the debate.

Here in Scotland, the reaction of the SNP was predictable in its puerility. Publishing a badly drawn map pointing out where Burnham’s No10 North will be located and reminding us how much British land mass lies even further to the North isn’t particularly helpful or mature, but it’s nothing more than we expected from the performative and superficial Scottish Nationalists.

There are, however, fundamental questions to consider about the nature of devolution and local control alongside the geography and demography of the United Kingdom.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged manchesterism | 6 Comments

ALDC’s by-election report 25th June

By Charles Quinn | Tue 30th June 2026 - 12:00 pm

Our report on last week’s by-elections is a little late again. This is because there were an unusually high number of by-elections last week. There were 24 principal authority by-elections or countermanded election, across 23 wards, with several again counting on the Friday.

It was a mixed set of results for the Liberal Democrats. In many places we didn’t get the result our local teams deserved for all their hard work, but we still registered some strong results in seats that are up for election again next year, and we also achieved one excellent hold which is where we start:

Teignbridge DC, Dawlish South West

Lib Dem (Pat Hackett): 692 (45.3%, +6.6%)
Reform UK: 451 (29.5%, new)
Green Party: 230 (15.1%, +3.8%)
Conservative: 154 (10.1%, -12.8%)

Lib Dem HOLD

Congratulations to Councillor Pat Hackett on a resounding result in Teignbridge – increasing our vote share by 6.6%, holding off Reform UK who were contesting the seat for the first time, and retaining the ward for the Lib Dems.

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Posted in News | Tagged aldc and local govennment by-elections | 6 Comments

What would Keynes do?

By Charlie Larkin | Tue 30th June 2026 - 10:29 am

Embed from Getty Images
I don’t tend to be the type to give more qualified people lectures about what to do and think, however in this case I feel it is of the utmost importance.

As a party it feels that we forget what our politics is really about, Liberalism. We chase headlines and create policy as a result of emotion and popularity rather than using our liberal roots to form it. Whether it’s Ed complaining about a banknote or a hapless policy of moving departments to Birmingham, we seem to lack core liberal ideas.

As a young person I can see what issues I will face as I enter adulthood. This is scary but also allows me to give a unique view of how I think we can create a better future for me and my peers. I see real Liberalism as the answer, not culture wars or hapless policy, but real liberal values that can build a stronger Britain. I also see other young people and how they see the world. A lot of them tend to be left-wing socialists who have a rather silly view of economics. However, I cannot say I blame them, they are being given a rather dross start in life and they are right to demand better. However, despite my left-wing sympathies I am a critic of class politics, I see it as no better than the race or gender politics of others.

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Posted in Op-eds | 15 Comments

Mathew on Monday – Place must be at the heart of Britain’s renewal

By Mathew Hulbert | Mon 29th June 2026 - 5:30 pm

Andy Burnham’s major speech today contained a message that deserves to resonate well beyond Labour politics. His call to put place at the heart of government, to deliver “good growth in every postcode” and to devolve power away from Westminster is one of the most compelling ideas to emerge from British politics in recent years… likely because it echoes much of what we Lib Dems have been saying/calling for for years now. For too long, Britain has been governed as though every problem can be solved from Whitehall. The result has been an increasingly centralised State that often fails to …

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Posted in News | Tagged devolution, faith and sport | 9 Comments

Why Britain should be wary of Andy Burnham’s Devolution Revolution

By Iain Donaldson | Mon 29th June 2026 - 11:08 am

Andy Burnham’s political appeal is easy to understand. At a time when Westminster appears remote, ineffective and disconnected from much of England, his call for devolution speaks directly to a widespread belief that power is too concentrated in London.

Burnham’s argument addresses a genuine problem. Britain is one of the most centralised democracies in the developed world. Decisions affecting communities hundreds of miles from Westminster are routinely made by ministers and civil servants with little understanding of local circumstances. The frustration this creates is entirely justified.

Yet supporters of constitutional reform should be careful not to confuse devolution with democracy.

The question is not whether power should leave Westminster. It should. The question is what happens to that power once it arrives elsewhere.

In “Head North”, Burnham and Steve Rotherham set out a vision of stronger regions, more powerful metro mayors and greater local autonomy. It is an attractive idea because it promises to rebalance the country and revive local decision-making.

The danger is that it may simply replace one concentration of power with another.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged andy burnham and devolution | 31 Comments

Alistair Carmichael challenges “bizarre” Europcar policy on Shetland

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 28th June 2026 - 1:30 pm

A lionness defening her cubs would bave nothing on Alistair Carmichael in defence of the island communities he represents.

Alistair’s constituents from Shetland had booked a car hire in Glasgow. Europcar insisted they present their passports, which they hadn’t thought to bring given that they come from Shetland, clearly part of the UK. They were told that this was because they were from a “British island”. They were later told that this is defined as “one who, at the time of rental, is not resident in the United Kingdom or Northern Ireland. Included in this definition are residents of the Shetland, Orkneys, Hebrides, Isle of Man, Isle of Scilly, Channel Islands and the Isle of Wight.”

They therefore ended up stranded and out of pocket. After Alistair’s intervention, they got heir money back but have not changed their absolute nonsense of a policy.

Alistair explained in a video:

Alistair said:

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Posted in News | Tagged Alistair Carmichael, europcar and shetland | 5 Comments

“Build, baby, build” but don’t lower our ambitions on affordability

By Victor Chamberlain | Sun 28th June 2026 - 11:55 am

One of the first decisions taken by Southwark’s new Liberal Democrat-Green Joint Administration has been to back the legal challenge against the Mayor of London and MHCLG’s decision to reduce affordable housing requirements from 35% to 20%.

For me, as Southwark’s new Deputy Leader responsible for Strategic Planning, this was a straightforward decision.

Housing has always been one of the defining Liberal Democrat issues in our borough. For years we have challenged Labour’s failure to build enough genuinely affordable homes, called for stronger affordable housing requirements, and argued that local people deserve to be able to afford to live in the communities they grew up in.

Now that we have the opportunity to put those values into practice, we intend to do exactly that.

Southwark has 23,000 households on its housing waiting list and more than 4,300 households living in temporary accommodation, including more than 5,000 children. The shortage of genuinely affordable housing is the defining challenge facing our borough.

Affordable housing requirements are the benchmark against which councils work with and negotiate with developers. Lowering that benchmark makes it harder to secure genuinely affordable homes through the planning system and risks setting a weaker standard across London for years to come.

That is why Tower Hamlets, alongside Lewisham and Hackney, has launched a legal challenge. Southwark is proud to support it.

Some have suggested that councils should simply accept the Government and Mayor’s decision and get on with negotiating the best deal they can. I disagree. Liberal Democrats have never believed that local government should quietly accept decisions that make life worse for residents. If a decision from Whitehall and City Hall will leave London with fewer affordable homes, it is right to challenge it.

The decision also says something more fundamental about Labour’s approach to housing.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured, housing and london | 16 Comments

Twenty-six years of evidence on drugs. Twenty-six years of cowardice.

By Tanya Park | Sun 28th June 2026 - 10:25 am

This week, a cross-party committee of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament, recommended that Ireland decriminalise the possession of all drugs for personal use, agreeing with a verdict Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly on Drug Use had reached two years earlier. It’s a recommendation, not yet a law, and the Irish government’s reaction was cautious rather than celebratory. Even so, it puts Ireland a step ahead of where Britain has managed to get on a question that, on the evidence, Britain’s own institutions settled a generation ago.

Twenty-six years ago, to be precise. In 2000, the Police Foundation’s independent inquiry into the Misuse of Drugs Act found that prosecuting people for cannabis possession caused more harm than it prevented and fell hardest on Black and minority communities, and recommended downgrading the drug to class C. The government’s first response was to rule out any change at all. Cannabis was eventually moved down a notch in 2004, only to be reclassified straight back up (to Class B) in 2009, against the explicit advice of the government’s own scientific advisers. When the chair of that advisory body, David Nutt, said publicly that alcohol causes more harm than cannabis or ecstasy, the Home Secretary sacked him. Asked about it, the Home Secretary told the Guardian the issue was “of course a political rather than a scientific point.”

A decade later, two parliamentary committees reached the same conclusion all over again: the Scottish Affairs Committee and the Commons Health and Social Care Committee, which recommended decriminalising personal possession and moving lead responsibility to the health department. The government’s written response ran to one line: it did not support decriminalisation. The Home Affairs Committee said much the same in 2022 and 2023. Last year, Sadiq Khan’s London Drugs Commission recommended decriminalising cannabis specifically, and was overruled within days by Angela Rayner. Keir Starmer has held that line since the last election, saying he had “no intention” of changing the law and didn’t think it needed much debate.

Six independent bodies, four governments, two parties, one answer, ignored every time. Nobody serious has argued the evidence points the other way. What’s been disputed, every time, is whether acting on it is worth the political risk. There’s a word for that, and it isn’t caution or prudence. It’s cowardice, and twenty-six years and several thousand preventable deaths is long enough to call it that plainly. In 2024, drug deaths in England and Wales hit a record high for the twelfth year running, with deaths linked to nitazenes, the synthetic opioids cut into the heroin supply, nearly quadrupling in a single year.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged drugs policy | 6 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 28th June 2026 - 8:55 am

Donald Trump

Trump is all about revenge. Just ask James Comey and others who failed to jump when the master called.

Secretary of Defence/War Pete Hegseth echoes the presidential instincts, and he has made it clear that the president is angry that Europeans did not fly to his aid in Iran when he wanted in the way that he wanted.

Hegseth added that if Europeans fail to support American operations, then they cannot assume that America will continue stationing tens of thousands of troops on their soil.

Hegseth’s threat follows the comment from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the forthcoming NATO heads of government summit in Ankara on July 6-7 could be the “most consequential” in the Alliance’s history.

Put together, it is easy to conclude that the president might be planning to use the summit to announce long-anticipated significant withdrawals of US troops in Europe.

There are more than 62,000 US troops based in Europe. They do more than provide a first line of defence against conventional attack from the East. They are 62,000 free-spending Yanks who support tens of thousands of jobs. Many local economies are dependent on American troops.

And that is how Hegseth and Trump view the presence of US forces in Europe. Primarily in transactional terms involving the expenditure of US dollars outside American borders.

There is, however, much, much more involved in their presence. US troops in Europe have enabled America to project military and political power on a global scale. That projection has in turned produced trillions of dollars for the American GDP.

The 10,000 American airmen in England’s East Anglia are the backbone of the unsinkable aircraft carrier off the coast of Europe. The US base at Naples is the command centre for its Mediterranean fleet. Ramstein Airbase in Germany is a major medical evacuation centre as well as the command headquarters for operations in Africa and the Middle East.

Trump’s instinct is for revenge. But like many instincts, it is self-defeating.

The atemoya

An obscure tropical fruit has become the latest proxy in the Cold War between Taiwan and China. The atemoya, a sweet hybrid of the sugar apple and cherimoya, is at the centre of an economic and political battle that has little to do with agriculture and everything to do with sovereignty.

The atemoya originated in Florida in 1908 as a cross between the sugar apple and the cherimoya. Heart-shaped it has a pale-green skin with knobbly segments and poisonous black seeds.

But it is the inside that counts. The meat of the fruit has been described as a mixture of pineapple, pear, strawberry, vanilla and coconut. One agronomist referred to it as “the pina colada of the fruit world.”

Even better than the fruit’s taste is the price that it commands. The average export price of the atemoya is $3.16 a kilo and a single fruit can weigh over a kilo.

Some of the world’s best growing conditions for the atemoya can be found in Taiwan’s Taitung County, a mountainous agricultural region. Before 2021, farmers made an exceptionally good living out of exporting 80-90 percent of their atemoya crop to mainland China. Then disaster struck.

Beijing suddenly banned all imports of the “green gold” of the fruit world, claiming that it had become infected with the Pacific mealybug. Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) denounced the claim as a politically motivated protest.

Taiwan’s atemoya growers faced financial ruin and just barely survived the crisis with a combination of government subsidies and a diversification into the Japanese and South Korean markets and processed foods.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged china, iran, taiwan and US troops | 1 Comment

Observations of an Expat: Gaza

By Tom Arms | Sat 27th June 2026 - 10:33 am

While the world’s attention has been fixed on Iran, Lebanon and the Strait of Hormuz, Gaza has quietly slipped from the headlines. That is unfortunate, because the territory is settling into a dangerous and potentially permanent limbo.

Except for the occasional exchange of fire, fighting between Hamas and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) has stopped. What has replaced conflict is an armed truce with a deep mutual distrust preventing any progress on last autumn’s peace plan.

The IDF still occupies more than 60 percent of Gaza with orders from Benjamin Netanyahu to increase that slice to 70 percent. The two million Gazans are crowded into a tent city on the beaches in the 30 percent which remains in Palestinian hands. There is chronic unemployment and the Gazans are totally dependent on aid for their survival.

The IDF occupation was—still is—billed as “temporary security buffers.” Nine months later, however, the ‘temporary’ zones contain fortified bases, permanent roads for armour, observation posts, logistics hubs and cleared fields of fire. They increasingly resemble the infrastructure of a long-term military occupation.

The IDF was meant to hand over control to a 20,000-strong International Stabilisation Force (ISF) which would oversee the final disarmament of Hamas and the training of a Palestinian Police. So far only 200 American soldiers have turned up, and they don’t appear to have a role. Several countries have been approached to contribute to the ISF, but all are frightened at being caught in the middle of an Israeli-Hamas crossfire.

The 15-member team of Palestinian technocrats who are supposed to run Gaza until elections can be organised has been appointed. It even has a chairman, former Palestinian Authority official Dr Ali Sha-ath. But the committee has yet to leave Cairo. They refuse to enter Gaza until the security situation improves. In their absence, Hamas continues to exercise political control.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged gaza | 2 Comments

The Lib Dem strategy review

By Rob Blackie | Fri 26th June 2026 - 7:34 pm

The party’s ongoing strategy review is welcome. But collecting feedback is only the beginning. Turning it into a successful long-term strategy requires us to answer four fundamental questions.

1. What’s the point of the Liberal Democrats?

I’ve been asked this question, sneeringly, more than once.

But, we do need to be clear what we want to achieve. More seats and votes are important, but they are not our ultimate aim.

This question might seem quite abstract today – but it will be critical in the years to come. We are going to have to make difficult decisions when we are fighting populist parties. For instance if the next election results in a hung Parliament, would we enter power with Labour to stop Reform? What if it meant we had to work with the Greens too?

Without a clear sense of purpose, it’s impossible to know which compromises are worth making and which are not.

I suggest that Lib Dem members would answer something like “building a freer and fairer Britain, both through exercising power and through influencing national debate”.

Our leadership needs to be clear on why we exist, because that purpose—not polling numbers or short-term tactical advantage—should guide the decisions we make when difficult choices arrive. And this answer needs to be public – because you can’t lead in secret.

2. How do we sustainably reach our objectives?

Too often we’ve focused on the next election at the expense of longer-term party-building. At best it’s been ‘strengthening our position’, and at worst it’s been ‘hail mary in hope of achieving electoral reform’. At times we’ve behaved as though electoral reform would solve our problems, rather than asking how to build a larger and more durable base of support. As we have seen in Scotland, Wales and the London Assembly, more proportional systems still leave us facing big challenges.

If we are going to make, and keep, Britain as a more liberal country, then we need a strategy that will succeed whatever happens, regardless of whether Reform, Labour or the Greens end up as the largest party after the next General Election.

Whatever happens politically, the one asset that benefits us in every scenario is a larger and more loyal base of voters who identify with the Liberal Democrats. This stronger Liberal Democrat brand* will mean more people voting for us in elections year in and year out.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged party strategy | 27 Comments

Author’s introduction to “Sliding Scales”

By John Elsom | Fri 26th June 2026 - 5:21 pm

Sliding Scales is a history of modern democracy from a liberal perspective. The dramatic transformation of the 19th century British Empire into a 20th century Commonwealth was a triumph of diplomacy. It had many setbacks and failures, but it did not lead to the havoc caused by the collapse of similar 19th century empires, which led to the wars in Algeria, the Congo, Vietnam and now Ukraine. It was not a sad down-sizing of power, but one which saved lives and civilizations.

Its strengths were to be found in ‘Free Trade’ (Imperial Preference). It encouraged mutual aid among its member governments, upon such matters as education, research and defence. It defended human rights above the claims of race, class and religion. Mahatma Ghandi, who studied law in London, set an example of civil disobedience against racial oppression. His battle against the Raj inspired the civil rights movements across three continents.

These were milestones in history, in which Liberal thinkers (Maynard Keynes, William Beveridge and Karl Popper) played key parts. With their European allies, they assisted the birth of an economic commonwealth (EEC) which grew into the European Union. When the Cold War came to an end, the Federation of Russian States under Mikhail Gorbachev was expected to follow a similar path, a commonwealth replacing a collapsed empire.

The invasion of Ukraine, under Vladmir Putin, was like a blast from the past. The ‘special operation’ in 2022 echoed Hitler’s Anschluss in 1938, but it ended differently. Ukraine was a tougher opposition than Austria. The rhetoric was that of old-fashioned imperialism. It claimed entitlement with a fake history, false patriotism and the hounding of minorities.

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Posted in Books | Tagged democracy | 1 Comment

Our voting system isn’t just unfair. It’s becoming dangerous.

By Roz Savage MP | Fri 26th June 2026 - 12:55 pm

Soon after I was elected in July 2024, I was approached by a man in Cirencester Market Place who congratulated me on my win. He’d voted in every general election since 1974, he said, and this was the first time he had ever voted for a winning candidate. For most of that time, he told me, he had barely bothered looking at the names on the ballot paper. He already knew who would win, but had voted out of habit – “or maybe just stubbornness” – but knew that it would, in effect, be a wasted vote.

South Cotswolds is a new constituency, created at the 2024 boundary changes, and covers areas that had consistently returned Conservative MPs for a hundred years or more. 2024 was the first election many residents could remember in which the outcome was genuinely uncertain. The response was striking. Engagement was different. Conversations on doorsteps were different. People who had stopped paying attention started paying attention again, and we had the 6th highest voter turnout in the country.

That should not be remarkable. The fact that it is tells you most of what you need to know about what first-past-the-post does to democracy between elections – not just on the night the results come in, but across decades of people quietly concluding that their participation is pointless.

I spoke in Westminster Hall this week in a debate on first-past-the-post. This is not the first time I’ve raised electoral reform in Parliament, and I want to use this piece to explain why I keep coming back to it – and why I believe the stakes are now higher than ever.

The numbers are worse than we think

We know the headline: Labour won 63% of the seats on 33% of the votes in 2024, giving them 100% of the power. The Gallagher Index – the standard academic measure of proportionality – gave that election a score of 23.67, making it the least proportional general election in modern British history, and the fifth least proportional result anywhere in the world.

But the detail is more striking than the headline. According to Make Votes Matter, it took on average 23,500 votes to elect a Labour MP in 2024, and over 820,000 to elect a Reform MP (silver linings). That is a 35-fold difference in the value of a vote, depending solely on which party you supported. The Green Party, Reform UK and the SNP between them received more than 6.7 million votes – over 23% of the total – and shared just 2.7% of seats.

Make Votes Matter also points out that for roughly 90% of the time since 1935, Britain has had single-party “majority” governments, and not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. Some may claim this is strong government, but it is minority rule, dressed up in emperor’s new clothes, and we need to call it out.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged electoral reform and first past the post | 12 Comments

Andy Burnham’s transport record: Who benefits and who gets left behind?

By Iain Donaldson | Fri 26th June 2026 - 10:25 am

Transport has become one of Andy Burnham’s defining issues as Mayor of Greater Manchester. He has championed the Bee Network, argued for London-style powers and made public transport central to his vision for the city region.

There have been real achievements. Greater Manchester has introduced bus franchising, giving local leaders more control over routes, fares and standards. The region is also moving towards a more integrated transport system.

However, the key question is not who controls the network. It is whether people can get where they need to go quickly, reliably and affordably.

For many residents, the answer is yes. For others, especially those living in Greater Manchester’s outer towns, the picture is very different.

Few places illustrate this better than Heywood.

With a population of around 30,000, Heywood is one of the largest towns in Greater Manchester without a station on the national rail network. It has no Metrolink connection and no direct bus service to Manchester city centre.

For many commuters, travelling into Manchester means changing buses along the way. During rush hour, the journey can take up to 90 minutes each way. For a town less than ten miles from the city centre, that is a serious barrier to jobs, education, healthcare and opportunity.

This is not simply an inconvenience. It is an issue of fairness.

While some communities enjoy direct rail services, fast tram connections and frequent routes into Manchester, others remain dependent on slow and indirect journeys. Access to opportunity should not depend on where someone happens to live.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged andy burnham, manchester and transport | 4 Comments

Farewell to the Fabulous Flick Rea, MBE

By Ed Fordham | Thu 25th June 2026 - 3:03 pm

At most funerals you go along with your slither of the story and learn so much more about the person, that you never previously knew. At most funerals the family have been busy organising and deciding readings and hymns. At most funerals…

Let’s be honest, the funeral of Flick Rea was never going to be like other funerals…

First, it was the hottest day of the year, decade… ever and heck did we sweat under the relentless sun.

Second, the funeral was planned in detail by Flick herself, the readings, who should read them, the hymns, even the photos for the order of service… each personally chosen by Flick.

And third, the number of people… I counted 162 give or take 10 and Golders Green Crematorium was literally bursting.

Oh and the vicar leading the service, Jonathan Kester of Emmanuel Parish, West Hampstead, was a personal friend and requested by Flick.

Copies of the local newspaper of record, the Camden New Journal were handed out at the end of the service as Flick’s passing was on the Front Page, page 4, 5 and 6, she led the editorial on page 16 and already a letter of tribute on page 18. And the very personal and touching letter from Party Leader Rt Hon Ed Davey MP to the family was read out in full by her son Robert, only to be followed by a letter of condolence from Prime Minister Keir Starmer KCB KC MP.

The gasps of admiration in the chapel were audible at these tributes – all much deserved for the “Queen of West Hampstead”.

Now, one of the best things about the many achievements of Flick was that we have all known her for so long, loved her, her stories, her style, her camaraderie that most of those present at the funeral knew the details of most of those achievements. We weren’t there to learn, we were there to say thank you, to share the loss of one so special and to support each other with a hug and a tot or whisky or two. In the end, the real legacy of Flick Rea was in the people who she loved, and who loved her in return. It is a living legacy.

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Posted in Obituaries | Tagged flick rea | Leave a comment

Liberals and the unions: time to talk again

By Jack Meredith | Thu 25th June 2026 - 12:31 pm

“But you’re a Lib Dem, I thought your party didn’t like unions.”

I’ve had that said to me more than once when I mentioned that I’m a member of both the Liberal Democrats and UNISON. I understand why people assume it: trade unions tend to get filed alongside Labour and the politics of the left. But it misses a long shared history between the unions, labour relations, and British liberalism.

The history is real, not a footnote. William Gladstone gave unions legal recognition and protected their funds in the Trade Union Act of 1871. Winston Churchill, as President of the Board of Trade, brought in the first enforceable minimum wages with the Trade Boards Act of 1909. And Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s Trade Disputes Act of 1906 stopped unions being sued for damages over strike action.

It wasn’t all to liberalism’s credit. The same Gladstone government that recognised the unions also criminalised peaceful picketing in 1871, and it took Disraeli’s Conservatives to undo that in 1875.

So why are we liberals so shy about saying that trade unionism is our kind of work? The case is strong. A union is just a group of free people who’ve decided they’re stronger together than alone, and the freedom to combine and bargain together is a liberal freedom before it’s anyone else’s.

We’ve never trusted power that answers to no one, whether it’s an overbearing state or an employer who can set the terms because the person across the table has nowhere else to go. Churchill saw it clearly in 1909, when he attacked the sweated trades for having “no parity of bargaining.” A union is one of the oldest fixes for that. And real freedom isn’t just being left alone; it’s having the means to live a decent life, and for most of us that’s won or lost at work.

None of this means copying Labour. Liberals, and the social democrats I count myself among, have always been wary of the union as a political machine: the block vote, the closed shop, the corporatism of the 1970s.

A liberal version would be friendly but kept at arm’s length, with no money changing hands for influence, and it would push hard for democracy inside the unions themselves; a union that won’t answer to its own members can’t lecture anyone else about accountability. Labour can’t make that offer, because it’s tied to the unions it speaks for. We can do both: back collective bargaining with no strings attached, and be the honest friend who defends the principle and still calls out the practice when it’s wrong.

We’ve done it before by building, not just fighting. The Liberal Yellow Book of 1928 called for works councils, profit-sharing, and a real stake for employees in the firms they worked for. Partnership and shared ownership have always been more our style than a permanent war between two sides.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged trade unions | 8 Comments

Huge victory for Campaign for Gigi

By Tom Morrison | Wed 24th June 2026 - 11:55 am

This week was a huge moment for the Campaign for Gigi.

After almost two years of campaigning for safer standards, inspections, and regulation of the nursery sector, the Government has announced a huge package of measures that would make nurseries safer and put child safeguarding at the forefront of the sector.

£8 million will be spent on strengthening safeguarding across early years, 3,000 more unannounced Ofsted visits will now take place to spot risks, and stronger checks on new nurseries before they open will happen.

As well as this, new legislation will be introduced in September which will set out specific and enforceable standards for how babies and young children must be placed and monitored during sleep in early years settings.

These changes are a testament to the tireless campaigning of Gigi’s parents, John and Katie Meehan.

Gigi was just nine months old when she died in a nursery in Cheadle Hulme. A nursery worker was later sentenced to 14 years for manslaughter after leaving Gigi tightly swaddled and face down on a bean bag for an hour and a half.

Gigi’s death was not an accident. It was a failure of a system that does not work and currently puts the lives of children at risk.

Last year the BBC reported there were on average 75 incident reports to Ofsted every week, a 40% rise in just five years. Horrendous cases in Twickenham, Camden and Dudley have also brought the safety of nurseries in this country to question.

Parallel to this, another BBC investigation highlighted the work of so-called ‘infant sleep experts’. These people, who often sell their advice on social media, would provide support and guidance to parents on getting babies to sleep better.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged Campaign for Gigi, childcare, infant sleep and safeguarding | 1 Comment

Andy Burnham’s record on policing: Success story or missed opportunity?

By Iain Donaldson | Wed 24th June 2026 - 10:25 am

Andy Burnham’s role as Mayor of Greater Manchester comes with a responsibility that is often overlooked. As well as leading the city region, he also holds the powers previously exercised by the Police and Crime Commissioner. That means he is ultimately responsible for overseeing Greater Manchester Police (GMP), setting priorities and holding the force to account.

As with housing, Burnham’s record on policing is more complex than either supporters or critics sometimes admit.

The strongest criticism of Burnham’s policing record is that one of the biggest scandals in the history of GMP happened on his watch.

In 2020, inspectors placed GMP into special measures after finding the force had failed to record more than 80,000 crimes in a single year. Around one in five reported crimes, and one in four violent crimes, were not being properly recorded. Inspectors described the service being provided to victims as poor, and the Chief Constable resigned shortly afterwards.

This was not a minor administrative failure. If crimes are not recorded, victims may not receive support, offenders may not be investigated and policymakers may not have an accurate picture of crime levels.

Critics argue that this raises questions about oversight. Burnham became responsible for policing in 2017. By the time inspectors intervened in 2020, the force had been under his supervision for more than three years. While he was not responsible for day-to-day management, accountability is a central part of the Police and Crime Commissioner role.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged andy burnham, manchester and policing | 12 Comments

Burnham: Strategic implications

By Paul Reynolds | Wed 24th June 2026 - 8:55 am

Much of the UK media coverage of an expected Burnham government later this year has focused on personalities and relatively trivial policy proposals.

Broader strategic issues have largely been absent.

However, Burnham’s local transport reforms and administrative refinements in Manchester have shown a desire to ‘make the state work’. Burnham has implied that a ‘privatisation mentality’ and an obsession with opaquely contracting everything out to the private sector, has led to the abandonment of attempts to make state institutions work properly. He’s out to challenge such assumptions, he implies.

This concept seems to lie behind Burnham’s ideas about the nationalisation of large monopolistic utility companies, which have become ‘financialised’ and thus even more abusive of power.

Burnham’s experience in Manchester seems to have convinced him that over-centralisation in government is inefficient; a departure from traditional socialist almost-religious belief in scale economies. His decentralisation verve includes fiscal decentralisation, envisaging local authorities, especially cities, raising more funds with their own taxes and levies; and switching to national taxes and hypothecated levies, which are easier to decentralise across the regions. (At present about 75%-85% of local authority income comes from Central Government, with micro-managing conditions attached).

Burnham’s attitude to economics seems superficial, but he appears to place emphasis on removing inhibitors to the growth of small businesses, in both taxes and regulation, and sees regional state authorities as having a major role in the promotion of private business activity, almost French-style. However, to help avoid a debt crisis the Burnham approach involves both tax reform and a broad rise in the tax burden.

Notwithstanding, there is no emphasis from Burnham on macroeconomic policy, but he does adhere to the concept of debt-financed Keynesian stimulae. However, in capital markets the link between higher borrowing and higher borrowing costs (even ‘borrowing to invest’) is based on the assumption that most of the consequent spending is inefficient and unproductive. Burnham implies that by making borrow-to-invest more efficient, he can break the link between higher borrowing and higher borrowing costs.

Where are the main challenges for Burnham, given such interpretations of the Burnham approach ?

The underlying problem is the Labour Party itself.

The Labour Party is no longer the party of ‘industrial labour’. It is the party of the bureaucracy and governmental institutions … and their contractors. As such they have more clout per capita than industrial labour; dual-hatted civil servants, local authority staffs, NHS, education, welfare-and-care, quangos, transport, et al.

This means Burham will face stiff resistance to a cull of governmental contractors, any increases in efficiency, or any real regulatory streamlining.

Any attempt to address the No 1 underlying problems of a sclerotic and impenetrable local and national UK state, will be vigorously opposed.

The UK state is so sclerotic that projects seem to take three times longer than comparable countries to complete, and cost three times as much. Does Burham know why ? It may even be a taboo topic within the ‘Party of the Bureaucracy’.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged andy burnham | 14 Comments

The Brexit Referendum – 10 years on

By Callum Robertson | Tue 23rd June 2026 - 3:00 pm

Today is the 10th anniversary of the EU Referendum

Ten years ago, many of our readers will have voted and would have been working hard for the previous few months to help make the argument for the United Kingdom’s place in the European Union.

Ultimately Britain Stronger In Europe didn’t win and like many people at the time, I remember being at a count, seeing the Sunderland result come in and the scale of the win for leave and thinking we’re f****d. This was not out of a sense of I told you so, more out of a growing realisation that the progressive, internationalist outlook that made me proud to be British had been largely shattered over the course of an evening.

In the decade since that day, things for our country have lurched from bad, to worse. We have missed out on roughly 6-8% of growth and have left ourselves exposed to the whims of an increasingly erratic USA. We also cut off our trading relationships with our friends and neighbours in the EU, causing both parties harm in a race to show some sort of Churchillian machismo. Needless to say the poorest in British society paid the price for this.

Over the next decade many of us fought hard for our place in Europe. for example I took on the mantle of standing for the Liberal Democrats in Clacton on Sea, many others laid the groundwork for future success, winning back councils and providing an alternative to the chaos of the Conservatives. The aim was that by showing them that Brexit could cost the conservatives seats and power, we could force them to rethink. Sadly, as the fact we left the EU tells us, we were wrong.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged brexit, european union and rejoin | 10 Comments

Most Read

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Liberalism must mean something again (Stephen O'Brien)
Andy Burnham has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to renew British democracy. He should take it. (Roz Savage MP)
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Vince Cable writes: Manchesterism and Localism (Vince Cable)
William Wallace writes: What do Liberal Democrats have to offer the “left behind”? (Lord William Wallace)

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