Blue Collar Liberals update
In October 2015 I wrote an article for Lib Dem Voice entitled ‘We Need More Blue Collar Liberals’. Since then I have been attempting to keep the issues raised by the article ‘live’, turning statements...
View ArticleTo leave or not to leave – that is the question
Embed from Getty Images The EU is in the news and is likely to stay there for many months to come. My relationship with Europe as a political issue started way back when I was 11 years old. It was...
View ArticleA personal reflection on the General Election, its aftermath and liberalism
I allowed my membership of the Liberal Democrats to lapse a while back but I took that decision without rancour. My involvement had not been passive I stood for local council and campaigned vigorously...
View ArticleNo country for old men?
It doesn’t seem that long ago that the trend was for younger political leaders. We had Blair, then Cameron, Clegg and Miliband. Our American cousins elected the youthful Barack Obama as their...
View ArticleCaring, Bereavement and the Liberal Family
I recently suffered a major bereavement, an event that triggered a decline in my health. Ten years as a carer has taught me that there isn’t much help out there. That still appears to be the case as I...
View ArticleThe better angels of our nature
The US state of Alabama went to the polls this week in an election that can hardly have been more polarised. In what is normally rock solid Republican territory, the GOP candidate Roy Moore faced...
View ArticleThe ongoing fight for social justice
My interest in political history sometimes finds me searching the used sections of the Amazon website for cheap second hand books. A recent discovery was a fascinating autobiography of Victor Grayson...
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Remembering the SDP
The events that led to the formation of the SDP were also formative years for me as a very young man becoming fascinated with politics. I can recall Roy Jenkins giving the Dimbleby Lecture and the...
View ArticleAuthoritarianism with a capital A
Albania is a small European country tucked away in the Balkans but for forty odd years from the end of the Second World War its people suffered under one of the most brutal regimes in modern history....
View ArticleOpinion: A golden handshake
Jonny Smith, the principal character in Stephen King’s ‘The Dead Zone’, awakes from a coma with the power to see into a person’s future by touching them. It starts in hospital where he forsees a...
View ArticleOpinion: The Betting Industry and Animal Welfare
The proliferation of betting shops in our high streets and the associated issue of the amounts gambled on high stakes gaming machines have been the subject of intense political debate recently. The...
View ArticleOpinion: What if ?
View image | gettyimages.com In February 1974 Edward Heath called a snap General Election in response to a second miners’ strike in three years. Heath famously posed the election as a decision on...
View ArticleOpinion: The future of pensioner benefits
Our pensioners quite rightly enjoy a number of benefits and it was of course a Liberal government that introduced the old age pension over a century ago. As part of the coalition it was a Lib Dem...
View ArticleA liberal century
View image | gettyimages.com In many ways the 20th century could be described as a socialist one. Internationally parties using that label emerged gaining electoral strength, or in some cases,notably...
View ArticleWhat a mess – the Labour leadership election
A lot of fellow Liberals, and indeed those from right across the political spectrum, will share my view that the current Labour Party leadership election has descended into farce. The question is how...
View ArticleTime to evaluate the privatisation of Royal Mail
View image | gettyimages.com The privatisation of Royal Mail was mooted by all the main political parties and finally happened under the last government. Like a lot of the public sector, our postal...
View ArticleWe need more blue collar Liberals
View image | gettyimages.com There is plenty of debate across the political spectrum about how unrepresentative of the overall population our elected politicians are. Much of this discussion focuses...
View ArticleLet’s get some national campaigns going on issues the voters care about
Our Party is all about campaigning. It is what saved the old Liberal Party from extinction and what sustains us in difficult times. I know local parties up and down the country are running campaigns on...
View ArticleBlair’s other legacy
It is inevitable given that it became the issue that defined his premiership – the failed invasion of Iraq will be seen as Blair’s great legacy. He got plenty of other things wrong too, but for all his...
View ArticleWhat hope for liberalism in the US presidential election?
Embed from Getty Images American history and politics are a passion of mine, so I always look forward to their primary season. A year when the incumbent President is not seeking reelection is always...
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