A Week in Politics #6

An RNLI lifeboat (Photo: Liverpool Echo)

Ahead of the Lib Dem conference in Brighton, may I wish all my friends and fellow party members a productive and enjoyable conference. 

I love conference and used to attend annually, but things have changed since children started school. It can be challenging to be both a parent and a political activist, and spending four days in Brighton isn't realistic.

Anyway, I am returning to me weekly political updates, which I started earlier in the year. I aim to ensure this becomes a regular feature and will certainly appear on most weekends going forward.

As before, I will take a brief look at some of the week's events giving either "cheers" or "jeers" to various people in the news.

Cheers to Canada, which looks set to become the EU’s first associate member. It is not precisely clear what associate membership is, but Canada would surely gain a stronger platform for promoting human rights, climate action and international law alongside like-minded democracies.

Cheers to Sweden’s centre-left opposition bloc, which secured a narrow victory in this week’s general election. Unpicking the significance of the results from a Liberal perspective is difficult as the political landscape is complex, but the most significant outcome is the setback suffered by the far-right, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats (SD). Under the previous centre-right government, the SD held immense leverage and Prime Minister Kristersson had even promised them formal cabinet positions if his bloc won reelection. This is the first time since entering parliament in 2010 that SD has lost round and is now the third – rather than second – largest party in the Riksdag.

Cheers to Lib Dem MP Ros Savage who, while fairly pointing out that her party is “struggling for relevance” and failing to paint a “coherent picture of the country we are trying to create”, has written Liberalism Alive – a report in which she advocates a bolder liberalism. It contains some very positive ideas and the kind of authentically radical thinking the Lib Dems need.  

Jeers to the Piddington Parish Council invoking the Battle of Britain in a remarkable display of nimbyism. The “referendum” to leave the UK is, ultimately, a bizarre piece of political grandstanding but the comparison with the people who courageously defied the Luftwaffe was disrespectful and trivialises the sacrifices made. It was especially inappropriate on Battle of Britain Day when honest remembrance matters.

Jeers to Joe Martin, Reform MS for Caerdidd Penarth, who claimed that “the British Empire was a force for good”, “the most morally sophisticated the world had ever known” and that “the decolonisation of Welsh history represents an attack on Welsh identity”. Such claims suggested that his calls for more truthful remembrance of history may not be quite so, well truthful.

Jeers to the ill-informed protesters that have forced the RNLI to temporarily close its lifeboat station in Portsmouth, compromising its life-saving work.  Jeers also to Nigel Farage, whose claim that the RNLI are facilitating the invasion of the UK led to this situation. Words have consequences. 

Jeers to Benjamin Netanyahu, who has confirmed that he is seeking new laws to allow Israel to remove citizenship from Israelis who criticize the nation’s military. Follows the success of the documentary film NAZA at the Venice Film Festival last weekend, the Oscar-winning directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor have found themselves accused of “treason against the state” by various government ministers , while over 1,500 Jewish filmmakers have signed a petition defending “freedom of expression and creation” and expressing solidarity with Szor and Abraham. Whatever one’s views of the film, threatening to make its directors stateless is no way for “the only democracy in the Middle East” to behave. (It’s also counterproductive and merely boosts international interest in NAZA.) 

Jeers to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, which has decided not to commit to funding the UK Youth parliament beyond March next year, meaning that the Youth Parliament will almost certainly cease to exist. Talk about how access to the scheme can be improved is welcome, but axing funding while those conversations are ongoing seems short-sighted and counter-productive. 

Jeers to Thomas Kerr MSP who, likely for the same cynical reasons that caused him to claim the city is “lawless”, decided to brand Glasgow’s Govanhill area a“ghetto”, only two years after celebrating its diversity when a Conservative councillor. This says more about Kerr’s political repositioning and his attention-grabbing behaviour than it does Govanhill. 

Tears for Bonnie Greer, writer and columnist, who died earlier this week at the age of 77. Chicago-born but long resident in Britain, Greer was a playwright, novelist, critic and broadcaster whose wit, intellectual curiosity and moral courage enriched our cultural and political life. Many will remember the calm dignity with which she confronted the BNP’s Nick Griffin on Question Time; it was characteristic of a woman who spoke fearlessly for equality and pluralism without ever surrendering her warmth or humanity. British public life is poorer without her.