CHRISTMAS COMPETITION: LOCAL ELECTION MESSAGES FOR 2019
I for one am hopeful that we can make gains not least because the last cycle of these particular elections coincided with the last General Election and we all know how that turned out. So what are the...
View ArticleChristmas competition How can we reduce inequality
Reducing inequality is something that all politicians even Conservatives say they are in favour of. They even produce figures to try and demonstrate that government measures are having a positive...
View ArticlePaddy Ashdown and the bobble hat
I joined the Liberal Democrats not long after the national coalition with the Conservatives was formed. In 2011 my local party asked me to stand as the candidate in the ward where I lived and I...
View ArticlePost-war Liberal leaders in perspective
There have been ten leaders of the Liberal Party and its successor the Liberal Democrats since 1945 as follows. I have resisted the temptation to rank them 1 – 10, but my top three are revealed later....
View ArticleCoalition blues
Back in 2010 after a General Election that left our party with the balance of power in a hung parliament the Liberal Democrats went into coalition with the Conservatives. Every section of the party...
View ArticlePaddy And Tony A Cautionary Tale
Paddy Ashdown became the leader of the Liberal Democrats in 1988. He inherited a party which was not in a particularly good place. The merger of the Liberal Party and the SDP had been difficult, to say...
View ArticleParking the bus or total football?
For those football fanatics among us tactics are something we study closely in our desire to enhance our enjoyment of the beautiful game. Some of us marvel at a defensive approach where a team plays an...
View ArticleAn Open Letter to Luciana Berger
Dear Luciana, As someone who spent many years as an activist in the Labour and trade union movement I follow developments in your current party closely. From what I can see you are being constantly...
View ArticleSome thoughts on education
I left school nearly forty years ago in 1980 aged 16 since then I have come across countless numbers of people who express surprise that I didn’t go into further education and obtain a degree. My...
View Article1951 – the nadir of Liberalism
The General Election of 1951 occurred only eighteen months into a parliament. It was called by a Labour government with a small parliamentary majority led by Clement Attle then at the head of what was...
View ArticleA fair deal for our care workers
The nation’s care workers are getting a raw deal and have been for some years now. This has been highlighted by many including our own party’s Health and Social Care Working Group. In ten years...
View ArticleLiberalism in the deep south
If Berkshire where I spent most of my life is in the South then West Sussex where I now find myself could reasonably be called the Deep South. Here on the Downs we are only ten miles from the coast the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In the court of the Brexit king….
The nationwide rallies of Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party are well underway. In forming the party as a top down organisation Farage has succeeded in his long quoted desire to lead a party free from the...
View ArticleWhatever Happened to Labour’s Legitimate Left?
Historically the Labour party has had a left and a right wing with the latter usually in the ascendancy. Much of that was down to the trade unions being led by moderates who were happy to use their...
View ArticleClik here to view.
We Need To Do More For Our Veterans
This year is the 75th anniversary of the D Day landings and we are seeing a lot of media coverage of this important historical event. When I think of D Day I think of my Grandfather Denis Warwick who...
View ArticleThe Lib Dems have become an establishment party
Liberalism has a rich history of radicalism from the People’s Budget, to Beveridge through to the more recent opposition to the Iraq war. The latter event had the effect of placing the Lib Dems to the...
View ArticleMen of honour
There comes a time when even the best of us decide in is time to exit stage left. We saw that this week with both Norman Lamb and Vince Cable announcing that they will be standing down from parliament...
View ArticleLiberalism Down Under
Australians recently went to the polls and elected a Liberal government. Unfortunately, Down Under the Liberal Party is a conservative body firmly fixed on the centre right of Aussie politics who with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
I now know I have PTSD and it is Liberating
I am not quite sure when I first encountered the ‘Black Dog’ but he has pretty much been on the premises for the last ten years. The crash as I like to call it came on 9th October 2009 when the...
View ArticleBack to the future
I have spent a fair bit of time in recent years studying the history of the Liberal Party. One period that particularly interests me is the years following the end of World War One when Labour replaced...
View Article