Write for us!Internal party democracy
Michael Meadowcroft, 6 March 1942–1 June 2026, Liberal MP and Political Philosopher
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If Jo Grimond’s logic, clarity and calm rhetoric drew me to liberalism, Michael Meadowcroft’s understanding of the philosophy underpinning it, confirmed my place in the party. In the 1980s I moved to Battersea and with some difficulty managed to locate and join a moribund local Liberal Party – but that’s another story. The activities of Margaret Thatcher had made whinging from an armchair, or complaining to friends in the pub, insufficient and I needed to rekindle my political flame. Battersea is close to central London, so the next step was to join a Michael Meadowcroft initiative he had set up…
Where Are All the Women?
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In most political Parties in the UK, men outnumber women, but in the Liberal Democrats the ratio of men to women is particularly bleak, worse even than Reform. Research published in December 2025 makes sobering reading for the Party: 33% of Lib Dem members are female, 39% of Reform members, and women’s membership of other Parties is much higher. Obviously our deputy leader and several of our MPs are women, and our one successful candidate in the Welsh Senedd election is a woman. But this success masks a growing crisis in female involvement in the Party at all levels. The…
Comment Is Free – if You Know Where to Look
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Censorship is central to the mission of LibDemVoice, the long established “independent” party platform. Its moderators guard their single interpretation of the party’s vision with passion. Opinions that question their beliefs and views from members who suffer from independent thought do not sully their website. This has become such a problem that many members no longer read its articles and those who do rarely attempt to respond, because they know that their contributions will end up in the bin. It was John Stuart Mill who famously wrote: “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of…
The Electorate Fragments. What Does This Mean for the LibDems?
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There has been some soul searching in the party based on recent results. Before getting into that it is clear the electorate has fragmented, and in such a multi-party model the ceiling any party can reach will be lower than before. And the floor will also be lower as alternatives exist. Therefore, as a party, our expectations need to shift. Are our core values persuasive? But it feels like our party has no distinctive vision for change in the country. Our values include: Equality, Democracy, Community, Human Rights, Internationalism, Environmentalism. Many of those can be seen as the status quo,…
When Will the Party Give the Electorate a Reason to Vote for Us?
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Before the party gets too self-congratulatory (i.e. ‘eight years of gains’), a reminder. In the 48 years since the start of the Thatcher era there have been only eight in which the estimated national vote of the LibDems in local council elections has been lower than in 2026 (and that is if we accept the upper estimate of 16% rather than the lower one, 14%, in which case the number of years is four). Two of those years were 1979 (14%) and 1980 (13%). The worst run was between 2012 and 2016 when the estimated proportions of the national polls…
It’s Time to Clean the Augean Stables
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Natalie Bird was vilified for wearing a T-shirt with a slogan bearing the dictionary definition of ‘woman’. She was banned from standing as a candidate and suspended from the party. She took the party to court and won. John Tilley is the former leader of Kingston Council. He was subjected to an internal party discipline hearing for objecting to a proposal that conference attendees should be required to wear badges stating their preferred pronouns. He wrote that there were more important matters that required our attention. He was sentenced to a ten year ban on holding party office or standing…
Access Denied: How the Liberal Democrat Leadership is Sidelining Women
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Last week saw another interview with Ed Davey telling a Lib Dem trans activist that he had been listening to trans people in the Party after the Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of woman in the Equality Act. Yet another illustration of the leadership jumping straight to placation mode when something upsets the trans lobby… Part of a pattern The 2022 changes to the unlawful Lib Dem Definition of Transphobia are another case in point. The Party held a special meeting with trans people just prior to amending the Definition. Several were invited to the House of Commons to…
Illiberalism in Defence of Liberalism
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There is a long-standing mutual wariness between the Liberal Democrats and the continuing Liberal Party that anyone who has spent time around either organisation will recognise. What is perhaps surprising is that the sense of grievance seems, on balance, to run more strongly from the Liberal Democrat side than the other way around. This has sometimes led to accusations which, examined in the cold light of day, don’t quite survive reasonable scrutiny. They also seem to focus on one side’s behaviour rather than understanding that it is a two-way street. It would be churlish, in the first instance, not to…
Childhood Is Precious – It’s Time to Tackle Online Harm
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Many people in the Party – especially at the grassroots – are totally unaware of the extreme libertarian approach that has been adopted to a whole range of issues that are most accurately framed as ‘sexual exploitation.’ From pornography to prostitution there has been a laissez-faire attitude and a presumption that somehow these matters are all about individual choice and can even be framed as ‘empowering.’ Of course, the majority of the sexual exploitation in these cases is against women and by men (for example in the UK 88% of people in prostitution are women and buyers are 95% +…
How Not to Make a Magna Carta
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A “New Magna Carta” was one of Ed Davey’s brand-new announcements at his speech to the Spring Conference on Sunday (15 March 2026). Let’s set aside the obvious question of how this has suddenly appeared as a new LibDem policy proposal without any consultation with the membership, and what this means for internal party democracy. After all, few Liberal Democrats would disagree with the principle of a written constitution. And it is certainly consistent with liberal values. But was what Ed was proposing really a good idea? I’m going to say no. It looks to me like he has taken…
Has the Party Become Too Libertarian for Its Own Good?
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Our membership and, in particular, our activists, are overwhelmingly middle-class men. Quite what the ratio is between men and women is unclear because the Party no longer collects data on the sex of members, but apparently the ratio in the Lib Dems is worse even than in the Reform Party. Is this impacting on our policies and Party culture? Are we steadily approving policies, at our regular state Party and federal Conferences, that might well suit a lot of men, but are a disaster for women and girls? Sex work is a questionable freedom Take our policy on prostitution, for…
John Stuart Mill – Do His Values Still Matter to Liberal Democrats?
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Modern political thought is built on foundations laid down largely in the last 300 years by men like Edmund Burke, Jeremy Bentham, Karl Marx – and for liberals, John Stuart Mill. In 1859 Mill’s seminal work, ‘On Liberty’ was published. It was the culmination of decades of thought and discussion and it is now recognised that the contribution of his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill was crucial to the endeavour. It is likely that she was responsible for sections of the book, though she died before its publication. A political philosophy that centres the individual The core tenet of ‘On Liberty’…
Have the LibDems Been Captured by “Authoritarian Progressivism”?
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In the Lib Dems’ 35 year history, the ideological divisions that have emerged in the party have always, predictably, been along left-right economic fault lines, with Orange Bookers on the right and social democrats on the left. Meanwhile, social issues have been largely understood to be matters of conscience. The thread that knitted individuals together as a party was liberalism – a fundamental commitment to individual freedom tempered by an imperative to avoid harm.
