Five council by-elections this week, and five Lib Dem candidates too, one up on the last time these seats wards were contested. Tilgate, Crawley The candidature of Angharad Old for the Lib Dems meant a welcome return to the ballot paper for the party in this ward after not standing last time. Result to come. Alexandra, Ipswich The Liberal Democrat candidate was Henry Williams in a ward where the party won regularly until coalition and since fell as low as finishing fifth. But now, the party is back in second: Alexandra (Ipswich) result: LAB: 50.2% (-3.7) LDEM: 19.6% (+10.3) CON: ...
I'd like to start by thanking TonyH for his comment. I've generally provided a list at the beginning of these pieces when there are three or more press releases, but he's right to note that, given how pieces are prevented on our "front page", it's better if I do it if there's more than one. So, I will going forward. We've only got one today though... Lib Dems welcome NHS England's Cross-Party Plans for Reform The Liberal Democrats have today welcomed NHS England's plans to reform the NHS and significantly curb the privatisation of NHS care. The plans, agreed on ...
Last week at Gateshead full council meeting, we had a debate about banning bottled water to help protect the environment and make the borough a bit more sustainable. Sadly, Labour destroyed the motion, committing themselves to doing nothing to save the planet. One of the speakers was Labour Councillor John Eagle who attacked me for having a Land Rover Defender. Just for the record, I do
I think the Tories have missed a trick, and am quite surprised this wasn't Johnson's plan to solve the EU Exit conundrum. Tories and Labour both stood on a manifesto promise to respect the Leave verdict. As we all know, the problem with that is that no-one knows what kind of Leave people voted for, and the range of options is vast. This fundamental flaw in the Referendum should have been addressed at the time by asking a second question: if the outcome of the first question is Leave, what sort of Leave do you want? May could have corrected ...
[IMG: In this handout photo provided by the House of Commons, Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks in Parliament in London, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019. An unrepentant Prime Minister Boris Johnson brushed off cries of “Resign!” and dared the political opposition to try to topple him Wednesday at a raucous session of Parliament, a day after Britain’s highest court ruled he acted illegally in suspending the body ahead of the Brexit deadline. (Jessica Taylor/House of Commons via AP)] UK politics has increasingly become an impenetrable landscape of chaos. After the supreme court ruling and the debate over Boris' language, it ...
Is there no limit to how low Boris Johnson is willing to go, no gutter into which he won't crawl? His suggestion last night that the best way to honour the memory of Jo Cox is to deliver exactly what the man who murdered her wanted is reprehensible. It was disgraceful. It would have been bad enough if he stopped there, but he didn't. When he was challenged about the language he was using and told about the death threats that had been made towards a number of MP's, mainly women, he called it "Hogwash." Is this really what he ...
The Supreme Court is the top court in this country. Its 12 members are the best legal brains that we have. It is their job to uphold the law without fear or favour. That is exactly what they have done this week. They were asked to look at whether Boris Johnsons decision to prorogue parliament was lawful. All eleven of them who sat on the case ruled that it was not. Let that sink in for a moment. All eleven judges, irrespective of which political party they support, irrespective of their views on Brexit, having heard the arguments put forward ...
Second paragraph of third chapter: The high-level questions about the origins of religion that these Victorian scholars posed and the evolutionary framework within which they set their intellectual problems have long ceased to interest or guide anthropologists; nevertheless, the naturalistic and critical stance they took toward religion has continued to bear fruit. What is of interest is that the men who posed these questions — Tylor, Spencer, and Durkheim, in particular - were not only of the highest intellectual caliber but have had a lasting influence on Western culture, the social sciences especially. Although I've ended up a political activist ...
I'm a Remainer and proud of it. I have fought tooth, nail and tweet against Brexit and will do to the end. I completely agree with Conference's decision to revoke Article 50 if we win an election, just as I completely disagreed with Parliament invoking Article 50 without a plan, three years ago. It's interesting that those who say it's undemocratic of us to tell the people what we'd do if we won a General Election are the same ones who doggedly defend our failing electoral system. I want an end to Brexit, I want electoral reform and I want ...
Thu 26th
12:46
Antony Hook: The Supreme Court ruling has opened the floodgates of major constitutional reform
Britain has always been a bastion or the rule of law, internationally respected as an exemplar of fairness, decency and parliamentary democracy. Restoring a supposed supremacy of the British institutions was central to Boris Johnson's campaign to wrench us out of Europe. The irony has been lost on few people that he has since tried to suppress Parliament and it has fallen to the courts to intervene. I know something about Britain's courts. Before being elected as an MEP, I had 16 years' service as a barrister. In almost every case I have been involved in, the liberty of an ...
You would think that, on the first day of its historic unrevokedness the debates in the House of Commons would be statesmanlike and of lofty constitutional erudition. Instead, by all accounts, it was a day of rudeness, squabbling and name-calling such as would disgrace a school playground. By accident or design, MPs have succeeded in changing the reporting of the debate from one of high constitutional significance to to one of scorn for and condemnation of politicians. On Newsnight last night Labour MP Barry Gardiner claimed that Mr Johnson's inflammatory language was deliberate and designed indeed to "change the subject" ...
With the Tories becoming a more shrill version of UKIP with less professionalism and a worse leader, and the Labour Party becoming the Socialist Workers Party with greater factionalism, the political opportunity for the Liberal Democrats is vast. Everyone who even casually watches politics knows this. However, this is easy to say and harder for the Lib Dems to take advantage of in practice. For instance, what should the Lib Dems' fiscal policy be? With the Tories and Labour both promising to bankrupt the country by spending vast amounts of public money we don't have, it might be tempting to ...
Wed, 12:56: RT @g_gosden: Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab says accusations that parliament suspension is a constitutional outrage are "nonsense" and the... Wed, 12:59: Another good thread from @pmdfoster - this point particularly jumped out, but read the whole thing. https://t.co/jcqMSRJ3Dn Wed, 13:02: At European Parliament, @hayward_katy states that the very notion of a "clean Brexit" is impossible. https://t.co/HEazPtWQE6 Wed, 13:06: This seems a strong statement, @GregHands @ShankerASingham? Given that London has not adopted your proposals, diffi... https://t.co/7MTMqzFJp1 Wed, 14:11: RT @JenniferMerode: But the British gov - the obvious interlocutor for Dublin - has its own alternative arrangements advisory group. So... ...
I was lucky enough to get called during the Leader's Q & A at Party Conference. I reminded Jo that we had had a Conference creche for most of the last four decades and that the Young Liberals had been prime movers in the original campaign for this. During that time, it has helped many parents and, in particular, young women to attend Conference and gain the benefits of learning, networking, helping make policy etc. But now there is no creche. Would she help to get it reinstated? Jo looked hard at the FCC Chair, Geoff Payne, who promptly said ...
Previously Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, Luciana Berger has now been selected by the Liberal Democrats for Finchley and Golders Green in north London: In a letter addressed to her Liverpool Wavertree constituents posted on Twitter, Ms Berger says she made the decision with her husband, with whom she has two children. "Balancing personal and professional responsibilities is complicated for everyone," she writes. "As a family, we have had to make a decision about how best to navigate work and raising our young children."... She adds they had decided to move to London after the next general election "after a ...
Ahead of the hearings of the Commissioner Designates, the Renew Europe Group, of which Liberal Democrat MEPs are a part, has outlined a common approach to be followed in order to guarantee a fair, transparent and objective evaluation process. The hearings are a vital process to ensure that the future College will be in the position to deliver on the commitment made by President-elect of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, before the Parliament and reflected in the mission letters given to each Commissioner. Dacian Cioloș, President of Renew Europe Group, speaking in Strasbourg said: We will analyse the ...
Faced with a £100 million Government advertising campaign promoting Brexit, the organisation 'Led by Donkeys' has responded with a characteristically satirical axe, launching a mock-up of a government website and an online tool that lets users design their own "get ready" poster. As the Guardian reports, they have initiated competition to redesign the government's "get ready for Brexit" poster. The best five designs will be put up on billboards in towns and cities around Britain in what the campaigners describe as a push to give the public more accurate information. The competition will be judged by the writer-director Armando Iannucci ...
In Houston, Texas, on Sunday, a meeting chaired by Narendra Modi and Donald Trump, arm in arm, brought together, in a festive atmosphere, more than 50,000 Americans, mostly of Indian origin. Such a gathering in honour of a foreign leader is a rare phenomenon in the United States. It symbolically sealed a new geopolitical reality: the emergence of a strategic axis between the world's largest democracy and the world's oldest democracy. India evolved significantly before it became as pro-American as it became at the beginning of the second term of the very popular Prime Minister of Hindu nationalism. After its ...
I have received complaints from residents about the state of the phone box in Milnbank Road which needs a clean, graffiti removal and a re-paint - see below : I have requested action from the BT Payphones Team.
In the House if Commons last night, Labour's foreign affairs spokesperson, Emily Thornberry has apologised for comparing the Liberal Democrat's to the Taliban: She said at the start of her speech tonight: Can I take this opportunity Mr Speaker, because we are debating vital issues int he Middle East, to apologise publicly to my Liberal Democrat colleagues for my crass throwaway Taliban remark in an interview last week. I'm sorry for what I said and I believe that our politics is better when we can be honest and apologise for our mistakes. A lesson that Her Majesty's Prime Minister would ...
I keep seeing Johnson repeating the mantra that he will comply with The European Union (Withdrawal) (No.2) Act 2019 but will still leave the EU on 31st October even without a deal. And then he smiles the smile of a Baldrick with a cunning plan. This seems to cause puzzlement amongst politicians as it appears contradictory. There are 650 MPs, many of them ruthless, many of them lawyers, all of them supposedly clever. If I can work out the riddle, surely most MPs have worked it out too but don't want to say so just in case it's not the ...
