The Opportunity Agenda: Liberal Reform’s Leadership Priorities

Liberal Democrat leaders do not have much say in setting Party policy, but they have far more in setting the Party’s vision, strategy and priorities. With this in mind, and with the Liberal Democrat leadership election fast approaching,  Liberal Reform have set out the themes we believe any successful Liberal Democrat leader should prioritise. At the heart of all of them is equality of opportunity and internationalism. The preamble to the Liberal Democrat constitution is Read more…

Destination Unknown

Michael Kitching  @mwkitching I thought it would be helpful to update Liberal Reform Members and Supporters on a little personal quest. Since rejoining the party after the 2019 General Election, having left to try and help set up something new (not Change UK before you ask!) it has become a bit of an obsession of mine in trying to get the party to think properly about Strategy and Grand Strategy. Working on politics outside the party Read more…

Let’s Review the Green Belt and Build More Houses

Ruby Chow* (@doublereds) Yesterday I had the pleasure to summate a motion Liberal Reform put forward to the London Liberal Democrats conference on the urgent need for more house building and in support of an independent review of the Green Belt. Although the motion was heavily amended to the point where it lost almost all force, Liberal Reform will continue to campaign strongly for this. What follows is the slightly edited text of my summation Read more…

Callum Robertson: Proroguing, the PM and the Royal Prerogative

By Callum Robertson, @CRobertson_LD Many will have seen the proroguing of parliament by the Queen on the advice of Boris Johnson, but what does this mean in the micro-environment of these circumstances and what is the wider socio-legal consequence? Our constitution Our constitution is almost unique in its haphazard make-up. It is a system that has evolved over a millennium and never had a defining revolutionary moment in the same way that most other western Read more…

Challenges to achieving “net-zero” greenhouse gas emissions

By Robert Johnston @robertj55 In a recent piece for Liberal Democrat Voice I argued for the adoption of a Carbon Tax or other robust carbon pricing measure to tackle climate change. While referencing the strong case made by economists for this, the article stressed the challenges that would remain in the technical, engineering and political domains. This article delves further into these challenges and stresses the systemic interactions that make strong and informed political leadership Read more…

Coalition Review: Electoral Reform

By Robert Johnston @robertj55 If one position unites the spectrum of opinion of the Liberal Democrats it is the need for a proportional representation election system with a special focus on the House of Commons. There are wider considerations for electoral reform; ranging across the House of Lords, devolved government to the tiers of local government but this article will concentrate on electoral reform of the House of Commons and the attempt to achieve it Read more…

Thinking Forwards With Europe: What Our Priorities Should Be For The EU Elections

By Callum Robertson, @Callum4Clacton It seems evident that we will want to focus on keeping Britain within the EU and fighting for an “Exit from Brexit” in the EU elections that seem almost certain to take place. However, this cannot be the sole reason we fight these elections. The elections are an opportunity to sell our vision of what we want the UK’s future relationship with the EU to be. For example, there are numerous Read more…

Spring Conference Briefing: York 2019

It’s that time of year again; this weekend the Liberal Democrats head to York for Spring Conference. As Brexit continues to dominate the headlines, Conference presents an opportunity for the party to re-assert itself as the only credible UK-wide party in favour of a People’s Vote. As ever, Liberal Reform will have a comprehensive presence at this weekend’s gathering, including a stall in the exhibition and a fringe event. The full details of our activity Read more…

IWD 2019: Interview With Aria Babu and Ruby Chow

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2019, Liberal Reform sat down with two of our board members, Aria Babu and Ruby Chow, to discuss liberalism, the Liberal Democrats, and gender equality… Liberal Reform: What does liberalism mean to you? Aria Babu: Liberalism is difficult to pinpoint. It fades in and out of popularity so at any given point you can find people accusing and claiming that all sorts of things are liberal. At its core, I Read more…

Coalition Review: Education

By Daniel Carr, @danmcarr Education policy matters a great deal to us. Our commitment to empowering people to thrive and take ownership of their lives demands that we think seriously as to how our education system can enable this. As education is also a key way in which social mobility can be promoted, liberals are right to emphasise this policy area when promoting our philosophy. We strongly believe that it is important that your education Read more…

Coalition Review: Justice & Civil Liberties

By Callum Robertson, @Callum4Clacton This article features as a contribution to Liberal Reform’s review of the 2010-2015 Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government. When reviewing the Liberal Democrat record in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) during the Coalition, it is easy to castigate our party over the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 and miss out evaluating other events. Our role during the Coalition in the MoJ was limited for two chief reasons. First, Read more…

Coalition Review: Aid & International Development

By Andy Briggs, @Briggs_AndyJ This article features as a contribution to Liberal Reform’s review of the 2010-2015 Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government. It would be easy when critiquing the Coalition’s record on international development to solely focus on the actions of the Department for International Development (DFID), the government department responsible for administering overseas aid, but this is too narrow a scope. While the work of DFID no doubt plays an important role in a government’s Read more…

The Liberal Reform Coalition Review

Liberal Reform is planning to publish a series of articles that provide a constructive critique of the Liberal Democrats’ participation in the 2010-15 coalition government. These will be published on the Lantern, Liberal Reform’s blog. The series will identify both the positives and the negatives of our party’s time in government, as well as looking ahead to future changes in policy. By being frank with ourselves the party will be in a better position to Read more…

Looking Ahead to 2019…

By Andy Briggs, @Briggs_AndyJ 2018 has been a frantic year for Liberal Reform, the Liberal Democrats, and British politics more generally. The past few months in particular have been so action-packed that it’s become easy to forget events that took place earlier in year. Whether it be the election of a new Liberal Reform board, Vince Cable’s proposed changes to the Party’s constitution, or the seemingly never-ending Brexit drama, memories such as Liberal Reform’s success Read more…

Lantern Exclusive: Stephen Lloyd on Resigning the Party Whip

By Stephen Lloyd, @StephenLloydEBN When I set off in 2016, to take part in another of the debates in draughty town halls that are the staple diet of a political campaigner, little did I realise that this particular hustings would  precipitate the events that would cause to me resign the Liberal Democrat whip in Westminster, That town hall debate was part of the referendum campaign, and of course I was arguing that the UK is Read more…

Medical MDMA: Radical but reasonable

by Aria Recently, British regulators and lawmakers have started to acknowledge the health benefits of certain, previously banned, substances. Cannabidiol (one of the chemical constituents of cannabis but with virtually all of the stuff that gets you high – THC – removed) has been legal since 2017. As of the first of this month, doctors have been able to prescribe cannabis-based products for medical use. These are moves in the right direction. Cannabidiol has been shown to Read more…

The candidates for London Mayor – in their own words

by Robert Johnston, @robertj55 With the selection of the party’s London Mayoral candidate imminent, the team at Liberal Reform want to ensure party members are able to make an informed choice.  So, we invited each of the candidates to discuss their experience, campaigning priorities, and policies.  Liberal Reform is not backing any one candidate and the purpose of the interviews is to allow people to compare the responses they give to a set of questions on Read more…

Open Energy: information and the market

by Robert Johnston, @robertj55 Information comes in many forms with various claims to ownership. The volume of data and the variety of contexts that transform it into information and knowledge has evolved beyond recognition since Hayek’s seminal work on “The use of knowledge in society”.  However, the importance of the availability of knowledge to the individual, whether person or business, has, if anything, increased and reinforced Hayek’s point that free but informed decisions and economic Read more…

The Core Vote

by Aria Babu, @Utilit_Aria Through the feeds of politics-internet I haven’t been able to escape the BMG research on the UK’s political clans (find out yours here). If you’ve managed to escape the discussion there’s more information in The Independent (and a more in depth report here), but basically it splits people into ten values and identity groups and then analyses how each vote, essentially highlighting how fractured the current alignments are and how little Read more…

Orange Bookers

This article originally appeared on Co-Chair Andy Briggs’ Medium blog, you can view the blog post here. According to recent research done by BMG, there are 10 distinct ‘clans’ of British voters based on the values that they hold. It was no surprise to me that I belong to the ‘Orange Booker’ clan, but many on social media appeared more confused. So just what is an Orange Booker? According to BMG: ‘Orange Bookers combine centre Read more…