The Burnham Devolution.It is encouraging that Andy Burnham seems as enthusiastic about devolution now that he is likely to take over power at the centre as he was when he was just a regional mayor. Such consistency is to be admired. However, desirable as devolution is in our over-centralised state, it should not be confused with democracy. Devolution of powers from a central despot to a collection of local ones is an improvement, but will not necessarily be sensitive to the needs of the people allegedly represented, and very unlikely to engage them (us) in its administration. In my life- time local ... (more) |
William Wallace writes: What do Liberal Democrats have to offer the "left behind"?Regional redistribution from the wealthy South-East to Britain's poorer cities, towns and villages is a sensitive issue for Liberal Democrats. When Britain left the EU and English regions and the devolved nations lost their share of EU regional funding (part of the balancing gains to the UK that the Leave campaign successfully ignored) the imbalance of investment and funding between the wealthy south-east and the rest of the UK tipped further. Boris Johnson breezily promised to 'level up' the country, raising expectations that were shattered when he failed to follow through. Andy Burnham may be more serious about reviving our ... (more) |
Battling Burnham: a Liberal Democrat responseFrom Gladstone and Home Rule, Grimond and Regionalism, Ashdown and Devolution and even Daisy's plan to move the Treasury,decentralising the British state has always been a Liberal Democrat ambition. Glad to see Andy Burnham and the Labour Party are finally catching up. The right's Brexit warcry of Take Back Control can be repelled like a skilled Jiu-Jitsu practitioner and transformed from scapegoating minorities to truly rebalancing our country. However in our algorithm-driven age, the British people are unfamiliar with our approach to place, devolution,federalism or electoral reform. As Mark Carney has told us 'Nostalgia is not a strategy! We must ... (more) |
The Joy of Six 1541"Former MI6, counterterror, and police officials expressed disbelief at the refusal by the British authorities to countenance a full murder investigation into Perepilichnyy's death. 'It's so obvious that it's an assassination,' said Chris Phillips, the former head of Britain's National Counter Terrorism Security Office. 'There's no way it wasn't a hit. It's ridiculous.'" In 2017, Heidi Blake and her BuzzFeed investigations team published a seven-part investigation of suspected assassinations on British soil by the Russians government. Richard Kemp reposts a Byline Times article that condemns SLAPPs - strategic litigation against public participation - as a shocking abuse of the legal ... (more) |
Burnham, co-ops, and Grimond: my thoughts"If people in 1844 could form the co-operative movement... to lower the price of food, then why can't we now...?" This is an extract from Andy Burnham's speech at the People's History Museum in Manchester, in which he partially laid out his economic vision for Britain, focused on social democracy and cooperativism, or more specifically, "Manchesterism". Now, I'm not going to do a deep dive into Burnham's achievements and drawbacks as Mayor, as I'm sure someone else can do a much better job than me on that. But what I do want to draw attention to is how Andy Burnham ... (more) |
David McWilliams: The Days of Pearly SpencerWikipedia says this is about "a homeless man McWilliams had encountered in Ballymena," but when I heard this in the Seventies, I saw Pearly Spencer as a criminal figure, like Pinkie in Brighton Rock or an associate of Violent Bonham Carter, whose time and luck are running out. It's odd the things you read into songs. (more) |
Another Farage paydayThe Guardian reports that Nigel Farage received £270,000 from a gold marketer for which he is a brand ambassador, his single biggest payment as an MP. The paper says that the Reform UK leader has been criticised in the past over his £400,000-a-year second job promoting the idea for Direct Bullion that people should buy physical gold and put it in their pension pots. This latest payment is double his fee from 2025, was received in May and appears in Farage's latest entry in parliament's register of interests, published on Tuesday: Anna Turley, the Labour party chair, said: "He pretends ... (more) |
Sign up here to get Scottish Liberal Democrats news via email[IMG: Alex Cole-Hamilton] Including stories from Liberal Democrats all across Scotland, my email digest service is available for free and you can sign up to it here: (more) |
The Climate Clock Is Ticking: Reflections from the International Seminar on Culture and Climate Change at Somerset House last FridayThanks to a Brazilian friend, I had the opportunity to attend the International Seminar on Culture and Climate Change, which took place on Friday afternoon at Somerset House in London. The event was organised by several institutions, including a department of my alma mater, UCL's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, and was attended by His Excellency Antonio Patriota, Ambassador of Brazil (pictured speaking above). Given last week's heatwave, the seminar took place in a particularly warm room, with a humid atmosphere that created an almost symbolic reminder of the Amazon rainforest, which was central to many of the discussions. ... (more) |
The state we're in - musings from a new young memberThe desire for a sense of control is a deeply futile effort, because despite being individuals, we find ourselves in a social paradigm, shaped by what is beyond our control - for example, where we are born. The person we grow into is also often a product of their environment, often not only inheriting their parents' genes, but also their ideas and mannerisms. We are all woven in a tapestry of human experience, for we were not born in the wilderness and raised by wolves, without any social contact. In our growingly atomised age, where our identities are now less ... (more) |