Write for us!Liberal Democrat leadership
Thought‑Terminating Clichés Are the New Normal
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Over the past week I have spent some time on Blue Sky. Partly because this is where a lot of Lib Dem MPs are now posting and I wanted to read their reactions to the EHRC guidance (in summary they have been largely silent except for the Women and Equalities spokesperson who condemned it as a huge step back for human rights – which I disagree with). However, I ended up in several conversations with trans activists on the app who are making the same kind of arguments that failed on Twitter (X) three years ago. One of the key…
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…
Speaking About Democracy in the House of Lords
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I spoke in the House of Lords on Monday about the irony of raising issues of democracy in what is now an entirely appointed chamber. My expectation when I entered the House in 1999, as a nominee of Paddy Ashdown, was that I would only serve for a few years before contesting elections for membership of the House in the promised, but never delivered, phase two of reform, promised after Tony Blair and Labour won the 1997 general election. Reform has been extremely slow I never thought that it would take 29 years to complete phase one, with the removal…
Proportional Representation Is Back on the Agenda but Which Kind?
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When arguing for proportional representation in a country where voters have become used to first past the post, we hit the problem that voters expect their MP to be a good constituency MP, that is a kind of social worker who will sort out their problems if they’re unfairly treated by the state. Proportional representation can’t happen when you have seats returning one representative. Hence, under proportional representation, voters don’t get a single representative dependent exclusively on their votes – except with Additional Member Proportional, the system used in London and Scotland, they can. In London, the Assembly has 25…
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,…
Another Referendum?
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The problem of asking people what they want in a referendum is that after the event, those happy with the result declare that the matter now settled and those who do not like the result then want another referendum at a later date. The problem for the Liberal Democrats is the party has held both views at the same time, following the Scottish Independence referendum and then the Brexit vote. In Scotland, the Party was happy with the result after the Independence Referendum, as the party campaigned strongly against independence, although it was estimated that 40% of Liberal Democrat voters…
The Scottish Parliament Election
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The recent elections to the Scottish Parliament saw an increase from 4 to 10 Liberal Democrat MSPs at Holyrood, compared to 58 for the SNP, 17 each for Labour and Reform, 15 Greens and 12 Conservatives. Now the sixth largest party in the Scottish Parliament, the Liberal Democrats have fallen from 17 MSPs in the first Parliament in 1999, when they entered a coalition to form the first devolved government with Labour 27 years ago. In the following two elections the Lib Dems only lost one seat. The party has celebrated this recent result as a great success, but what…
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…
The Nuclear Deterrent and Reality in the UK Political Scene
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The United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent sits at the centre of a sharpening political debate. As billions are committed to renewing the Trident programme and deepening NATO nuclear cooperation, fundamental questions are being asked about strategic independence from the United States, about the true cost to Britain’s defence budget, about the burden the deterrent places on Royal Navy strategy, and about what each major party actually believes. This article surveys the landscape: the current programme, its fiscal and naval consequences, and where Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens stand. The UK Nuclear Deterrent Today Britain’s deterrent rests on…
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…
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.
The LibDems in 2026 – A Progressive Force or a Forgotten Postscript?
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Strange times indeed. The Labour government is imploding with a leader who looks like a dead man walking and recent (January 23rd Politico Poll of Polls) support at 18%. The Conservatives are directionless and leaking influential members, with support equal to Labour at 18%. Reform is out in front on 29%, while the Greens and LibDems are on 14% and 13%, respectively.
