A Week in Politics #8

Julie Calder (Photo: Scottish Lib Dems)

Here is another weekly round-up of the news, this week with far more jeers than there are cheers.

Cheers for Julie Calder, our fantastic candidate in Wick and East Caithness who won a fantastic victory with a massive 50.4% of first preference votes – 20% up from 2022 - and in the SNP council leader’s own ward, too! A thoroughly welcome result and a reminder that local campaigning deserves its place alongside the Westminster headlines. Congratulations to everyone who knocked on doors, delivered leaflets and helped get voters to the polls.

Cheers to Andy Burnham for probably the most positive conference speech from a serving Prime Minister in living memory. Yes, I would have liked to hear a little more detail on some proposals… but overall Lib Dems should be broadly supportive because he was articulating the kinds of things Lib Dems want to hear.

Cheers – cautiously – to the Labour Party for finally committing to a Commission for Electoral Reform. After so many false starts it feels like overdue progress may finally be being made. Liberal Democrats have every reason to welcome a chance to make votes count more fairly, while keeping a close eye on what happens next.

Cheers to Pippa Heylings for pressing the government this week to introduce the Liberal Democrats’ essential energy guarantee to protect vulnerable households.  

Cheers to the Green-Lib Dem controlled Folkestone and Hythe District Council’s staff for winning the national IRRV award for Excellence in Social Inclusion for the third year running, alongside a highly commended award for its benefits and welfare team. Helping vulnerable residents rarely attracts the attention given to political rows, but this is council work worth celebrating. Congratulations to those delivering practical support when people need it most.

Cheers to the Organization of American States for calling on Nicaragua to restore civil liberties and release political prisoners following President Daniel Ortega’s announcement earlier this summer that he’s ending national elections and effectively banning opposition. International pressure needs to be sustained, defending the right to organise and oppose a government is a significant step. 

Cheers to those delivering food and medicine to Oleshky, the Russian-occupied Ukrainian town where civilians face severe shortages. Reuters reported this week that Ukrainian forces had used heavy-lift drones to deliver around four tonnes of supplies, according to the regional governor. Amid the destruction of war, efforts to keep people fed and cared for deserve recognition. Britain should continue supporting Ukraine and pressing for humanitarian access and the protection of civilians.

Cheers to Latvian voters. Latvia’s General Election offers a mixed picture for Liberals, but Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs’ pro-Ukraine United List securing 35.8% of the vote is an encouraging result for those who believe European cooperation and solidarity with Ukraine are essential to defending freedom. Kulbergs will still need partners and talks may prove difficult as his former coalition allies, the Union of Greens and Farmers, lost all 16 of their seats while populist parties have gained.  Nevertheless, Kulbergs’ stated refusal to govern with Latvia First is welcome. Support for Ukraine should not become a bargaining chip in coalition negotiations.

Jeers to those offering accommodation with Moscow as an answer to Latvia’s problems, exploiting understandable anxiety about living costs and security

Jeers to Ed Davey for his churlish, misguided and mean-spirited knee-jerk response to the Prime Minister’s speech and specifically in relation to social care and the pensions triple lock. To state that “Burnham is risking a repeat of the Winter Fuel Payment fiasco” or that Labour plans to fund social care “from the pockets of our poorest pensioners” is nonsense. I might expect a former coalition minister to defend the triple lock, but there is no excuse for perpetuating untruths. I suspect Ed does actually know how pensions work, so I can only assume he is deliberately peddling misinformation for cynical political motivations.

Jeers too for John Swinney, for his dishonest claim that Scottish pensioners will be £2000 worse off by 2049 under Andy Burnham's proposed changes to the triple lock. The figure is derived from a Scottish Govt extrapolation of UK-wide savings for 2049-50, not money taken from pensioners. The First Minister seems to ignore the impact of Barnett consequential generated by the proposed social care spending rises in England. He also told parliament: “we’ve been taken out of the European Union, we’re now going to lose out pensions, Scotland needs to have independence”. I expected better from him than to deliberately mislead in order to manufacture grievance.

Jeers to Nigel Farage and Reform UK for their reckless scaremongering over Fairford, seizing on the arrests to suggest a connection with Iranian agents supposedly arriving on small boats (an idea as implausible as it is laughable) before the facts were established. Police subsequently confirmed that all five suspects were British nationals; they were released on bail while investigations continued. That does not settle questions about possible foreign involvement, but it certainly does not substantiate his small-boats insinuation. Serious security investigations demand evidence and restraint. Turning uncertainty into inflammatory migration rhetoric is disgracefully irresponsible from anyone aspiring to lead the country.

Jeers to Reform-run Derbyshire County Council for refusing to cooperate with local democracy reporter Eddie Bisknell. Elected representatives should answer scrutiny, including questions they find awkward. Public accountability cannot depend on whether a council approves of a journalist’s coverage: residents are entitled to know how their money is spent and decisions are made. 

Jeers to the return of the Drumcree dispute, which most of us had naively believed had been successfully consigned to history. For 28 years, the Orange Order has been prevented from completing its traditional Drumcree return parade along the mainly nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown, but this week the issue has exploded back into controversy. In the words of Naomi Long, Alliance MLA for East Belfast, “Pandora’s box has been opened, unleashing an entirely predictable, destructive and wholly avoidable sequence of events”.

Ulster has spent decades trying to move beyond the sectarian divisions and violence of the past. Without going into detail, this raises all kinds of questions. What does reopening this dispute actually achieve? Does it improve relations between unionists and nationalists? Does it contribute anything towards reconciliation? Why bring this battle back now? What is the Orange Order trying to achieve? Is it likely to prove counterproductive? And what does this say about where Unionism is at the moment?

Jeers also to St Helens Council leader George Woodward (Reform). Speaking to Kevin Duala on Radio Merseyside, he was asked if the council would me marking Holocaust Memorial Day. Woodward’s response was: “The jury’s out on that. We’ll come to that when we get there. We have cancelled Refugees’ Week, we then didn’t celebrate Pride… on the whole we said broadly we won’t be doing these sorts of celebrations… we’re OK with Christian calendar events and things which are unifying.” How does Holocaust Memorial Day divide? After speaking with council officers Woodward later confirmed the council will mark HMD, but if a council leader, even a Reform council leader, isn’t able to respond to that kind of question with anything other than “Yes, of course!”,  then their judgement is seriously in question. Any reasonable person should instinctively recognise the importance of remembering the Holocaust and its victims.

Jeers to the state of Tennessee for its appalling and utterly horrifying attempted execution of Christa Pike, who survived two lethal injections and is now critically ill in hospital. Her lawyers had warned about the medical difficulties that could make the procedure disastrous. In any ordinary moral sense, “cruel and unusual punishment” scarcely begins to describe this ordeal. The state’s insistence that it followed its protocol makes the defence more chilling: what does that say about the protocol? Colleen Slemmer’s murder was horrific, and her family deserves compassion, but their suffering cannot justify the state inflicting further deliberate suffering. Tennessee’s treatment of Christa Pike is such a damning indictment of capital punishment that it should shame the United States into abolishing this barbaric practice.

Jeers, too, to the machinery that worked to ensure the execution went ahead, with Tennessee’s lawyers seeking to overturn a temporary stay so Pike could be killed before further consideration of her childhood sexual-abuse claims. A procedural review is an utterly inadequate response to such a profound moral failure.

Jeers to Senator Marsha Blackburn, who responded to this horror by pledging to “bring back the electric chair” if elected governor of Tennessee. Sadly, calls to abolish capital punishment will be unlikely to be successful as long as politicians see electoral advantage in cruelty and inhumanity.

Jeers to Georgia’s government as funding restrictions and its crackdown on civil society prompt the liberal Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom to leave the country. Independent organisations and a free press are essential to democratic accountability. Making their work increasingly difficult should alarm anyone who cares about Georgia’s democratic future and its citizens’ freedom to challenge those in power. ALDE have already called for sanctions against the Georgian regime.  

Tears for Dame Esther Rantzen, who died this week aged 86, leaving an extraordinary legacy of compassion and campaigning. Through That’s Life!, Childline and The Silver Line, she helped bring neglected suffering into public view and offered people somewhere to turn when they felt frightened, isolated or unheard. The moment she surprised Nicholas Winton with an audience containing people he had rescued as children from the Nazis was arguably the greatest moment in television history — an unforgettable revelation of lives saved and humanity at its finest. In her final years, she brought the same determination to campaigning for choice and dignity at the end of life. Her finest memorial will be the people who found help because she insisted their voices mattered. Our thoughts are with her family, friends and everyone whose life she touched.

Tears for those killed and injured in Monday’s Russian attacks on Ukraine, including the victims of a strike on the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv. Reuters reported at least ten deaths across the country and more than eighty people injured. Behind every casualty figure are families, colleagues and communities whose lives have been shattered. Our solidarity with Ukraine must include sustained support for civilian protection, as well as a just peace that respects its sovereignty.

Tears for the three people, including a child, who died attempting to cross the Channel on Monday, and for the survivors and bereaved families. French authorities reported that the overcrowded dinghy had run into trouble off northern France. Every such loss should strengthen the determination to tackle smugglers, improve rescue cooperation and provide workable safe routes for people seeking protection. Compassion belongs at the centre of the response.

Finally, in non-political news, cheers to Xanthe the python, reunited with her owner in Peterborough after more than two weeks missing. Having escaped her enclosure and slipped through an open door, local people spent over a fortnight trying to locate her safely. Xanthe was eventually found in a neighbour’s garden on Tuesday. A happy ending for owner Jacob Edwards, and a reassuring reminder that some lengthy neighbourhood disputes can be resolved without a planning appeal. Any Liberal Democrat campaign organiser must surely admire her ability to cover a patch without being seen.  I wish Xanthe a comfortable retirement from escapology.