Category: News

The very MP’s protesting that the current deal placed before Parliament is more adverse than the deal offered by Mrs May’s are the same MPs who blocked the current deal from being progressed, because of insufficient time to read the report.

The unwillingness of the majority of MP’s to accept the outcome of the referendum, which they agreed to hold, and subsequently opposed any reasonable compromise, beggars belief.

Trade Unionists and Management sitting around a negotiation table would never behave in such an obstructive and irresponsible fashion.

The Liberal Party believes it is realistic to disengage from the EU as an initial stage, with further negotiations and agreements as the relationships change and evolve.

We give our utmost respect to those Labour MPs who have defied the party whip and threats of deselection, to put the national interest above party politics.

During the Queens Speech the government announced plans to introduce compulsory photo ID for voters. This is despite reliable sources suggest 3.5 million voters do not have such ID 

We have to ask what is the evidence that there is a problem that ID cards are needed to resolve.

According to the Electoral Commission report for 2018 .

“There is no evidence of large-scale electoral fraud relating to the 2018 local election.

Of the 266 cases that were investigated by the police, one led to a conviction and two suspects were given police cautions.

Outcomes of cases where the suspect was either convicted or accepted a police caution.

At the local elections in 2018, a Peterborough Green Party candidate pleaded guilty to forging all signatures on his nomination form so that he could stand in the election.

At the local elections in 2018, a Labour Party candidate seeking re-election registered to vote at two different addresses in Rochdale.

He applied to vote by post at both addresses and voted twice in the Rochdale council elections.

It is an offence to vote more than once in the same local election area.

West Yorkshire police received a report that a postal vote cast in the 2018 local elections appeared to have been completed and returned by someone who had died.

Police interviewed the deceased elector’s widow. She had been his sole carer and often did his paperwork. It appeared to be a genuine mistake in the midst of grief.

Of the three actual serous cases not a single case would have been prevented by the introduction of Voter ID card checks.

Therefore one can only conclude the legislation is a deliberate and calculated obstruction to prevent 3.5 million voters having the right and carrying out their civic duty to vote.

The Liberal Party notes with anguish the collapse of the Thomas Cook group leaving hundreds of thousands of customers awaiting repatriation from holiday destinations and thousands of staff made redundant.

After a span of 178 years the company had been forced into administration by a perfect storm of changing holiday booking habits, unsustainable debt, and an uncertain business outlook due to political instability in key holiday destinations and subdued domestic demand.

Although the party accepts the arguments for not extending a taxpayer funded bailout to prolong the company’s existence, serious question still needs to be asked about its failure.

These include why the company continued to trade whilst accumulating further debt, the part played by its banker in it’s abortive re-financing and the accountability of its management in its final failure.

The sustainability of a traditional bricks and mortar business in the face of new technology should not translate into administration and closure.

The Labour Party has taken a very alarming new turn on the question of education.

The state seeking to  monopolise education is the first step taken by every authortarian dictator across the world.

If private schools are abolished, what next, the right of parents to send children to faith schools abolished?

This policy actually shows Labour has given up on driving higher standards of educational achievement in state schools.

What is the immediate consequence of any such policy, without doubt parents and private schools and staff will exodus abroad and the money and skills lost to this country.

The diversity of private schools has often meant experiments in different forms and styles of education has been trialed and then extended to the state sector if successful.

It is dangerous path to go down and a clear expression Labour has become the party of state control with contempt for freedom of choice.

The Liberal Party acknowledges the benefit private education can provide to overall education standards, however, we are critical that financial bias is afforded to the private sector by charitable status and evasion of VAT.

The Liberal Party doubled its share of the vote in the Old Swan By-election, Liverpool.

Labour 1153 minus 17%
Mick Coyne Liberal Party 293 plus 7%
Greens 130
Lb Dems 272
OSATC 138
Conservatives 96

This is a seat where 3 Lib Dems represented not so long ago and the Lib Dems mounted an extensive 7 leaflet campaign and endorsement by Luciana Berger.

They were devastated at the count and we moved into second place.

The Liberal Party notes that a majority of Conservative party leadership contestants have admitted to historic casual drugs use, and as such we welcome their honesty and hope that this gives rise to public debate.

The party advocates replacing the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and ancillary legislation with a replacement which provides for an effective strategy of legalisation, regulation and control.

We call for the establishment of an independent multi-agency co-ordinating body to oversee policy development and implementation in relation to the supply and control of drugs.

We support the taxation of drugs and redirection of criminal justice expenditure to education and treatment services and the dissemination of accurate and truthful information to minimise substance-related harm to individuals and communities.

Criminalisation of those afflicted with drugs dependency can have a detrimental impact, alienating people from contributing to society.

We believe that these measures will eliminate the criminal marketplace and cause a reduction in drugs related crime and violence whilst aiding those most in need of rehabilitation.

Can we make a constructive alternative to Michael Gove’s call to reduce VAT to boost the economy post Brexit?

Setting aside this contradicts all his measures as a Minister to support austerity on the basis we needed to reduce the public spending requirement

The best way to boost the economy, pound for pound, would be a significant rise in tax thresholds.

By putting more disposable income in the hands of the low paid it would be cost effective than reducing VAT.

It would help boost the incentive to work for low paid and those on flexible hours.

It would help those regions like the South West, Wales, Scotland and Merseyside and other areas of relatively low earnings.

Regardless it does show that endless austerity is counterproductive and holding back the economy.

Cllr Steve Radford
President of The Liberal Party

British Liberalism has a distinguished history going back to Gladstone and Lloyd George with landmark reforms such as elementary education, the secret ballot, pensions, town planning, free school meals and health insurance. Liberalism laid the foundations of our welfare state.

This country could do with the good offices of Lloyd George right now because today’s Liberal Democrats are a sorry shadow of their forebears, for which their squalid antics over Europe are supremely responsible.

You might think that the EU’s distant bureaucracy and its failure to distinguish between unity and uniformity would be at odds with liberal philosophy but the Liberal Democrats have long been fanatical supporters of the European project and this is uniquely enshrined in the Preamble to their Party Constitution. However, the LibDems have never dared to court unpopularity by promoting their vision of a United States of Europe on the doorstep, preferring instead to rely on Brussels and Big Business to deliver the desired result by stealth. Even now, their vision of a Federated Union of European States is entirely absent from their 2019 EU Election Parliament manifesto and literature.

To begin with, in the complacent expectation that UK voters would continue to support our involvement in the European project as they had in 1975, the LibDems proposed a referendum on our membership of the EU (Hansard 14^th November 2007, Column 781)and together with Green, Tory and Labour MPs backed the Cameron plan for a people’s vote in 2016.

When the Country upset their machination by voting to leave the EU, the LibDems then led a conspiracy run by the sort of people who talk loudly in restaurants and who believe that membership of a political party and patronage of the Guardian newspaper somehow gives these self-appointed keepers of the nation’s conscience the right to lord it over the rest of us, who are clearly too stupid to understand the grand scheme of things. Incredibly, the party that proposed the referendum then resolved to “resist” the result of that referendum by conspiring to delay, water down and defeat BREXIT altogether, which is tantamount to trying to topple a newly-elected government before it takes office. What sort of Liberalism is this?

Worse still, the LibDems then castigated those who had voted to leave the EU, in particular the 65+ age group who had voted LEAVE by nearly 2 to 1 and who were accused by the LibDems of “shafting the young”, who had voted to remain. Leaving aside that these oldies were the very same voters who as youngsters had voted by nearly 2 to 1 to remain part of the European project in 1975 and that politicians should ask themselves why they changed their minds, the LibDems’ intolerance and attempts to pit one age group against another are a disgrace to British Liberalism.

Any Liberal worthy of the description will recognize that the only way to settle the national argument over BREXIT is to give it a go. The UK has experienced 46 years membership of the European project and decided in 2016 to try something new. What of it? Nothing lasts forever. If, after 10 years, it transpires that our leaving was a mistake, then we can re-join the EU, but we have to experience BREXIT first before we can make another judgement. That’s how democracy works; we vote, we experience the consequences of how we voted and then we vote again in the light of our experience. 

The Liberal Democrats have done immeasurable damage to the British Liberal tradition of promoting independence, individualism, tolerance, localism, and democratic accountability, for which an apology is due. Luckily, they do not speak for all Liberals, some of whom are campaigning to secure BREXIT. To this end, www.liberalbrexiteers.com has been launched to reassure the majority who voted for BREXIT in 2016 that we took the right decision to vote to leave the EU.

“We are delighted one of the leading community campaigners, Cllr Charles Shaw,  in Lincolnshire has joined the Liberal Party after the Lib Dems have nailed their colours to the mast of ignoring and obstructing  the wishes of the British people to leave the EU”.

Cllr Steve Radford

Cllr Charles Shaw

Cllr Charles Shaw is a Town and Parish Councillor in Bardney Group and in Skellingthorpe, Lincolnshire and has a career background as a Youth and Community Worker, Interviewer and Company Secretary.

He spent a number of years as Director of a Voluntary Youth Organisation and is currently Chair of Lincolnshire CVYS and of One East Midlands the regional voluntary sector body. He is a former Vice-Chair of Voluntary Sector North West and as a Lay Minister served for some years on Lincoln Cathedral Council. 

He is married, to Daphne with three grown-up children who live respectively in Lincoln, Ashton under Lyne and Glasgow.  As a Youth Officer for a Council for Racial Equality, he led on integrated and respectful provision for a range of communities and believes community cohesion is best achieved by complete openness.  

Having joined the Liberal Party over 40 years ago and later becoming a Constituency Chair in the Liberal Democrats, County Chair and regional conference host he came to find the party increasingly centrist and conformist and not the wide church of views that the Liberal Party held and allowed to be expressed and found it formulaic and solely centred on its own interests. In the 2010 local elections, he came within 7 votes of unseating the now current MP for Lincoln Karen Lee whom he now liaises with on youth and community matters and worked cross-party in the 2016 referendum, having as a teenager been part of the Common Market Safeguards Group working with Wedgewood Ben and Peter Shore. Working regularly cross-party Charles has put Community and Voluntary Sector interest forward whilst maintaining a wide range of business contacts.

Charles is a Trustee of The National Association of Boys and Girls Clubs and a Board member of a range of Business Education bodies. Having been brought up in Preston but living in Lincoln he is an avid supporter of Preston North End FC and Lincoln City FC.

Reasons for leaving the Liberal Democrats

1. The party stance on Brexit and unwillingness to recognise and provide a platform for liberal leavers. 
2. The appalling internal communications emails which effectively make it almost impossible for activists and members to directly contact officers. 
3. The lack of promotion of Town and Parish Councillors on an equal basis with other member politicians. 
4. The lack of new selection procedures to abolish central approval lists and the drafting in of candidates nationwide (e.g like you did in Hazel Grove and other constituencies) 
5. Deliberate obstruction of electoral pacts with Liberals. 
6. Complete lack of public speaking out about the costs and political intentions of the EU and therefore miss informing young people of the dangers in the EU as opposed to the benefits and potentially surrendering constitutional independence and their future freedom and human rights in order to keep MEP’s, EU appointments and party funding.