Lib Dem election review: Are we a church or a fast-food franchise?

The Liberal Democrats have published a review of their performance in last years general election - you can read it here.

There's a lot in it to digest, but one thing that struck me is the pull on us of two different views of a political party.

One view is put forward by Tim Farron, who chaired the review, in his foreword:

Community politics is in our blood, yet we take it for granted and at times some of us can be sniffy about it: it’s small beer, it's just pavement politics, it’s just a dolled up set of election tactics…. But nothing could be farther from the truth. The antidote is to build deep relationships with our communities, to serve them at an immersive level, to ‘keep in touch and get things done’, to win trust and to continually earn it.

This sees a political party as a local, community-based organisation. Maybe, and this is not a dig at Tim, it has much in common with a church.

The other is seen at the start of chapter 1:

Thanks to strong leadership, a clear strategy and iron-fisted discipline the party enters 2025 with strength, optimism and momentum on its side.

I hope it means 'self-discipline', because I doubt anyone will be attracted to joining an organisation by the prospect of being subject to iron-fisted discipline.

More representative of this second view, perhaps, is one of the points in favour of bulk buys for literature: "securing message and design discipline".                                        

"Design discipline" sounds like something a fast-food franchise would worry about. 

So maybe this is the choice all political parties face: church or fast-food franchise?

Or perhaps you can plot all parties, even all organisations, somewhere along a continuum from one to the other. If you want to be pretentious you could talk about Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.

I'm aware that some churches are strong on discipline, so 'church' may not be the best characterisation of that end of the organisational spectrum, but it makes for a good headline.

DarwIN Shrewsbury Festival, February 2025

Charles Darwin was born on 12 February 1809, and the 21st DarwIN Shrewsbury Festival celebrates his legacy with a month-long programme throughout his birth month.

About 40 events are scheduled, including guided tours, music, lectures, art exhibitions and interactive activities

An extensive programme of music and talks will highlight Darwin’s life story, home and garden, impact on modern science, relationship with his wife, Emma Darwin, and musical connections

Interactive educational opportunities for children and families will run throughout February half-term.

Full details here.

The Joy of Six 1311

Luke Clements says everyone should be talking about Tash Ashby. "Tash Ashby was 21 years old when she died. At the time of her death, she was street homeless, living in the undergrowth around Hereford bus station. Her lifeless body was found in her tent. Tash Ashby was taken away from her birth parents in 2011. Both her birth parents were at her inquest, along with her sister. Their pain was evident."

Chris Grey looks at the new year's Brexit news: "So this, coming up to five years since the day we formally left the EU, is the level to which the grand promises of Brexit have brought us: arguing over just how bad the damage has been. Not a single leading advocate for Brexit has ever apologized for the promises they made."

Over the past three years, Garry Kasparov has repeatedly argued that any chance at Russia becoming a democratic country not only requires its total military defeat but a shedding of its imperialistic legacy — a stance not widely embraced by other Russian opposition figures. Read an interview with him by The Kyiv Independent.

"For a decade now, liberals have wrongly treated Trump’s rise as a problem of disinformation gone wild, and one that could be fixed with just enough fact-checking." Facebook fact checks were never going to save us, argues Natasha Lennard, they just made liberals feel better.

Simon Taylor reflects on the ideas about public health and landscape design shared during a recent symposium.

"It’s one of the genre of midcentury English novels that feature little boys (usually travelling home from boarding school) who must bridge the gap between the pagan and the Christian in the haunted English landscape." I just wanted to share this comment by Katharine May on Lucy M. Boston's The Children of Green Knowe.

Joan Armatrading: All the way from America

As a successful Black singer-songwriter from the UK, Joan Armatrading was once a phenomenon, in the Seventies, even unique.

I can remember Noel Edmonds playing her records early in the decade (see? we were all young and cool once), but this is the title track from her second album, which came out in 1980.

Americana UK reckons the song is about just what it seems to be about: a woman in a transatlantic relationship that's going nowhere:

The song is from the pre-internet age when it took about a week for a letter to cross the Atlantic. Shockingly expensive overseas phone calls often had a randomly iffy quality with delays, static, and extraneous noise that made a conversation challenging. 

Even timing a call so that the five- to eight-hour time difference could work out required military-level planning. A long-distance relationship with so much unavoidable silence and expense was not for the faint of heart.

A notoriously and unapologetically private person, Armatrading has only provided a sliver amount of information about the song’s inspiration. The subject’s identity has never been divulged. 

She told Songfacts, “That song was somebody who was in America who was trying to persuade me to go out with them and would call all the way from America when I got back to the UK.” 

She added in another interview, “He would phone…nice bloke, but obviously just going to be a friend.”

Emma Raducanu ‘badly bitten by ants’ on eve of Australian Open

The judges were sorry to hear of Emma's ordeal, wish her a swift recovery and hope she enjoys every success in the tournament. 

Nevertheless, they still gave the Independent our Headline of the Day Award.

Michael Mullaney condemns Tory plan to cancel Leicestershire County Council's elections

Michael Mullaney, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Leicestershire County Council, has condemned the Conservatives decision to seek government permission to cancel this years elections for the council.

He told Leicestershire Live:

"People have a right to go and vote in May’s elections. Cancelling them is just a way for the county council’s Conservative leadership to try and rush through their plans to see boroughs and districts abolished.

"To create a huge super authority, containing most of Leicestershire and possibly Rutland too, would see decision making taken further away from people’s lives. These plans are not about devolving power to local communities, they are about centralising power and making it more remote from people.

“It’s also about avoiding an election where the Conservatives were likely to lose a lot of seats and possibly the control of Leicestershire County Council.”

Abolishing the county's district councils was the ambition of the county council's former Toru leader Nick Rushton. (He is currently taking a back seat for health reasons - I wish him well.) But the plan was always vocally opposed by Leicestershire's Tory MPs.

This time we have heard nothing from them. Too few? Too insignificant? Too busy on social media?

If it's because the Tories are afraid of doing badly in May, this seems shortsighted - no party wins every round of local elections. Still, it's typical of our new government's adroitness that they have given their main opponents the chance to make that choice.

Oh, and what will happen to Rutland?

An interview with Carl Cashman, leader of the Lib Dem group on Liverpool City Council

Read on Substack

Follow the link to Substack to hear Aaron Ellis interviewing Carl Cashman, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Liverpool City Council and surely a rising star of the party.

The blurb for this interview with one of the party's rising stars runs:

Carl Cashman is the leader of the Liberal Democrats in Liverpool. He does what Sir Ed Davey hopes to do nationally — be the official opposition to Labour.

Aaron and Carl discuss the actual differences between the two progressive parties, if the LibDems should give up ground on the centre-left in order to win over more disillusioned Conservatives, and whether or not the Coalition government should be “rehabilitated”.

They also talk about The Master — Tony Blair.

Aaron is chief strategist for a health technology company and describes strategy as "achieving your ambitions as stuff outside your control tries to stop you".

Or as Harold Macmillan might have put it: "Stuff, dear boy, stuff."

The Joy of Six 1310

Helen Coffey argues that The Traitors, where intelligence is a hindrance that should be hidden at all costs, is a metaphor for society's increasing suspicion towards, and rejection of, intellect, especially when it comes to those in charge.

"It’s really nice when we get people through the yard – the positives far outweigh the negatives ... Farms are very isolated places. It used to be tens of people working on this farm and now it’s just me and my husband." Patrick Barkham meets some of the growing number of farmers who are joining forces with right-to-roam campaigners to boost public access to the countryside.

Harriett Baldwin, a former chair of the treasury select committee, argues that the power afforded to 11 Downing Street can have unintended and negative consequences for democracy.

"For some, school meals evoke memories of austerity and control, as in Daniel’s recollections of being forced to eat everything on his plate. For others, they represent moments of community and care, as Julia’s experience of encouraging her children to embrace school dinners illustrates." Heather Ellis and Isabelle Carter introduce their oral history project on school meals.

"What 1969-70 means is loads of background (and foreground) material beginning with Steve Winwood’s involvement in Blind Faith and ending with King Crimson’s third album, Lizard. Among those featuring heavily are Spooky Tooth, Free and Mott the Hoople, three classic early Island rock bands whose largely student and mostly male following tended to sport ex-army greatcoats, along with plimsolls, loon pants and cheesecloth shirts." Richard Williams reviews the second volume of Neil Storey’s The Island Book of Records.

Casmilus watches the 1971 film Unman, Wittering and Zigo, which stars David Hemmings and is set in a minor public school: "Like all films set in such locations, it gives an insight into the early character formation of the men who play a large role in running Britain for the next 50 years."

A goods train from Wisbech to March in 1996

There has long been talk of reopening the railway from March to Wisbech, but what was it like when it was open? It closed to passengers in 1968, but goods trains ran until the year 2000.

So here from 1996 is a train running from the Purina factory in Wisbech to March. Expect wonky track and, this being Fenland, level crossings.

The fact that the person filming this train was able to overtake it so often suggests that line speeds were very low by then.

Still, who can resist an unexpected halt at a level crossing in a bleak setting?

Write a guest post for Liberal England

I love publishing guest posts here on Liberal England, whether they're on politics or wider culture. And I'm happy to entertain a wide range of views.

But I'd hate you to spend time writing something I really wouldn't want to publish, so do get in touch first.

These are the last 10 guest posts on Liberal England:

• The Lib Dems must meet the challenge of the Greens in the new political landscape - Anselm Anon
• This blog is not suitable for kids - Laurence Warner
• The future’s bright, the future’s orange - Stuart Whomsley
• An Oasis reunion? Have we not suffered enough? - Stuart Whomsley
• The night the Walker Brothers played a Market Harborough club - Jo Colley
• An essay in identifying Englishness - Stuart Whomsley
• No sign of an end to defections in local government - Augustus Carp
• When Syd Barrett met Nick Drake - Rob Chapman
• Councillors changing party: Christmas update - Augustus Carp
• Old Carp's Almanack: Councillor defections in 2024 - Augustus Carp

A post for Lion & Unicorn: No Room at the Inn (1948) and the death of Dennis O'Neill

I've written a post for Lion & Unicorn about the 1948 film No Room at the Inn, which starred this blog's hero Freda Jackson. The poet Dylan Thomas was partly responsible for the screenplay.

No Room at the Inn was based on a 1945 play of the same name by Joan Temple. Like Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, that play was inspired by the death of the foster child Dennis O'Neill on a farm in Shropshire.

And Dennis O'Neill died 80 years ago today.

Read the post on Lion & Unicorn.

Peter Wyngarde and James Bolam in Noel Coward's Present Laughter (1964)

Noel Coward wrote Present Laughter in 1939, and it was in rehearsal when war was declared. As a result it wasn't performed until 1942. Many thanks to Classic British Telly for posting this Granada adaptation of it (if only by mistake) from 1964. There are lots more good things on that YouTube channel.

It was shown as the first in a season of four of The Master's plays - A Choice of Coward. There are a fair number of fluffed lines, so it was either shown live or recorded under time pressure.

Yes, the acting is theatrical, but then it has to be. This is Coward satirising the theatre and satirising himself - he even starts to do so in his short prologue to camera.

Peter Wyngarde is convincing in the lead role, and James Bolam - 1964 was also the year The Likely Lads began - is an an eccentric young playwright. His appearance is surely based on that of Leicester's leading existentialist, Colin Wilson.

If you want a good read, try the Wikipedia entry for Peter Wyngarde,

No one expects Josh Reynolds' inquisition

Before Christmas it was Amazon, yesterday it was the fashion e-commerce platform Shein that was interrogated by the Liberal Democrat MP Joshua Reynolds at a hearing by the Commons business and trade select committee.

Josh later wrote on Bluesky:

With their poor record on modern-day slavery, I was hoping that they could reassure us they were taking the issue seriously...

The Joy of Six 1309

"The proposals increase the number of directly elected executive mayors, whether local people want one or not. (West Yorkshire didn't, but got one anyway).  This system, borrowed from the US, places the emphasis on personalities rather than policies.  The personality may be  good at both publicity and policy (Andy Burnham?) or maybe just good at publicity (Boris Johnson.)  Government by councillors elected to implement policies may sound dull bit is likely to be more effective." Peter Wrigley is critical of Labour's plans for local government.

Alistair Carmichael says Labour's dissembling to win power was a gift to the Farages and Trumps of this world.

"At the very least, health-care privatisation has almost never had a positive effect on the quality of care. But outsourcing is not benign either, as it can reduce costs, but seems to do so at the expense of quality of care. Overall, our Review provides evidence challenging the justifications for health-care privatisation and concludes that the scientific support for further privatisation of health-care services is weak." A study by Benjamin Goodair and Aaron Reeves, published in The Lancet Public Health, suggests hospital privatisation is linked with worse patient care.

"As industrial, productive capitalism is abandoned and Britain embraces an economic model based on finance and rentierism rather than making things, graduates and non-graduates will soon end up working alongside one another in call centres, Amazon warehouses or hospitality." Dan Evans argues that its graduates without a future that politicians need to woo.

Gladys Mitchell, one of the major figures of the golden age of crime writing, was interviewed about her work and her favourite authors by B.A. Pike in 1976: "I find every book difficult to write, partly because, even if I make a plan, I seldom keep to it. Then I am apt to get new ideas as I go along, and this often necessitates a certain amount of rewriting."

"Eventually we got to New Mills where we had to pull the canoe out to get past the weir. The kestrel took the opportunity to hop out but then looked unsure what to do next. I encouraged it onto my paddle and then it jumped on to my arm and then flew across the water and perched on the railings. The whole thing was quite magical." Liam Calvert shares a canoe trip through Norwich with a hitch-hiking kestrel.

GUEST POST Old Carp's Almanack: Councillor defections in 2024

Augustus Carp, our man with the Local Government Chronicle and a slide rule, looks back on a year packed with defecting councillors.

As a start to the New Year, here’s a handy cut-out-'n-keep souvenir edition of all the defections by local government councillors we are aware of in 2024. The net changes are 

• Conservatives -186
• Labour -192
• Lib Dems -69 
• Greens +8
• Nationalists -20
• Reform UK +58 

The balancing figure consists of 401 Independents, broadly defined, as not all changes are directly from one party to another. 

I freely confess that when I started this exercise a couple of years ago I had no idea of the numbers involved, but for 445 elected representatives to change their party allegiance in just one year strikes me as rather high.

Nevertheless, for sensible analysis of local politics we need to rely on the experts – people like Andrew Teale, Mark Pack, Britain Elects and the others, who examine the by elections, calculate the swings and thence extrapolate into the future.

They provide us with solid sustenance, whereas the defections summarised above are perhaps more like herbs and spices – they might add something to the dish, but can be somewhat repulsive if relied on too much, so please use them with caution.  

“But what”, I hear you cry, “about the mass Labour defections in Broxtowe? And that unusual Conservative resignation in Oldham?”  

Well, the thing is, they all happened in 2025, so you will have to wait a while before they are tallied and collated – perhaps until late April, when I will look at the situation again, just before the (cancelled?) local elections in May.

Augustus Carp is the pen name of someone who has been a member of the Liberal Party and then the Liberal Democrats since 1976.

Ed Davey: Summon the US ambassador over Musk comments

@libdems

People have had enough of Elon Musk interfering with our country’s democracy when he clearly knows nothing about Britain. It’s time to summon the US ambassador to ask why an incoming US official is suggesting the UK government should be overthrown.

♬ original sound - Liberal Democrats

Well said, Ed.

There's also a party press release on this:

Responding to Elon Musk’s latest post on X in which he suggested that America should “liberate the people of Britain” and overthrow the government, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:

"People have had enough of Elon Musk interfering with our country’s democracy when he clearly knows nothing about Britain. It’s time to summon the US ambassador to ask why an incoming US official is suggesting the UK government should be overthrown.

"This dangerous and irresponsible rhetoric is further proof that the UK can’t rely on the Trump administration, and it’s in our national interest to rebuild trade and security ties with our allies in Europe."

‘Fairy porn’: Is this booming erotica genre an insult to Wales?

For the second day in a row, the Guardian wins Headline of the Day.

Central Line to Richmond, Bakerloo Line to Ealing

 

Jago Hazzard on two schemes proposed in a 1989 report but never built. One would really have put Turnham Green on the map.

You can support Jago Hazzard's videos via his Patreon page.

Mystery of bananas on Nottinghamshire road has residents a-peeling for answers

The judges were heard to grumble about "trying too hard," but the Guardian still wins our coveted Headline of the Day Award.

David Laws and Jim Wallace on Lib-Lab cooperation 1903-2019

The Liberal Democrat History Group website is a goldmine. With my pick and my mule, I have found this video of a fringe meeting the group held during the Lib Dem Conference last September.

Its title was Friends or Enemies, Allies or Competitors? Liberals and Labour 1903–2019, and the speakers were David Laws and Jim Wallace. Wendy Chamberlain was in the chair.

You can also hear David Laws speaking on the subject on a recent edition of Never Mind the Bar Charts - I endorse David's condemnation of Lloyd George, but am slightly mystified by the parallel Mark Pack draws between him and Boris Johnson. 

David's book Serpents, Goats and Turkeys: 100 years of Liberal–Labour relations is published by Politicos.

Labour tries to entice the most popular Lib Dem in the Commons

Embed from Getty Images

The Mail give the story one of its multideck online headlines:

EXCLUSIVE A day in the life of Britain's most famous guide dog: Watch how Jennie the golden retriever went from a horror XL Bully attack to the Lib Dem's secret weapon at MP Steve Darling's side

And the meat of the story is here:

'I got approached last night when we were in the Chamber and asked to defect to the Labour Party,' Liberal Democrat Steve Darling tells me, a laugh playing across his face in his too-warm office, deep in the maze of Westminster.

After 30 years as a councillor and leader of the local authority in his native Torbay, the MP's fierce loyalty to his constituents would make him a thrilling scalp for any political campaign.

And with cherry red Doc Martins, he is as cool as any of the government's fresh-faced front bench.

'Strangely enough I said no,' he answers himself with a delighted laugh – because everyone in the room knows the real reason that Starmer wants Mr Darling on his side.

The object of their envy lies next to him, sprawled out on the green-patterned carpet, absentmindedly alternating between a red dinosaur toy and searching looks for attention.

Yes, it's Jennie, who as the Mail goes on to say:

has captivated the public with her long naps in PMQs and eagerness to get some love from nearby politicians – sparking fun-filled viewing for even the most yawn-inducing of debates.

The Joy of Six 1308

Outraged by the January 6 Capitol riot, a wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell family or friends. The one person he told was the ProPublica reporter Joshua Kaplan.

Miranda Pirch reminds us: "There are so many Jewish people, both within Israel and outside it, who are committed to fighting against the oppression of the Palestinian people, regardless of what pro-Israelis would have you believe."

"The oddly intrusive feeling of each viewing being mediated - by a business standing between oneself and the viewing, the listening, the reading - bears a chill of surveillance. That’s not the case when one holds in one’s lap a book that one owns, pops a disk into a player, or lays a needle on a record." Richard Brody counsels against throwing away your DVDs.

Hannah Williams goes in search of London's oldest pub.

"Lodge’s highly-praised campus novels were major representations of university life across the 1970s and 1980s: Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975); Small World: An Academic Romance (1984); Nice Work (1988) - all better, because funnier and wider-ranging, than Lodge’s friend Malcolm Bradbury’s sour The History Man (1975).": Adam Roberts pays tribute to David Lodge.

Casmilus identifies a new genre of children's television: Glam Smiley. These were drama series with a very Seventies aesthetic in which children got caught up with high espionage.

Lou Donaldson: Good Gracious!

I've chosen this not so much for Lou Donaldson saxophone as for John Patton's Hammond organ.

Good Gracious! is the title track from a 1963 Donaldson album, and Patton's playing is just the sort of Hammond work that must have inspired the young Steve Winwood.

It is worth emphasising, though, that Winwood was a guitarist and jazz pianist before be became known for playing the organ.

It is said that when Keep On Running topped the charts at the start of 1966, Spencer Davis bought a house and Steve Winwood bought a Hammond.

Conservative group leader on Oldham Council resigns after police called to meeting

Let's see how Oldham Conservatives are getting on. Here's a report on BBC News:

The leader of Oldham Council's Conservative group has resigned after police were called following a heated council meeting.

The meeting on 18 December had to be adjourned after members of the public and councillors hurled abuse at each other following a debate about housing and planning.

Councillor Graham Sheldon, who has stepped down both as leader and as a member of the Conservative group, said he believed "the actions of two members of my group caused the mayhem and deterioration of the meeting".

Further down the page, we read that:

After the meeting was adjourned, a riot van and police cars were pictured outside the council building.

Greater Manchester Police said an investigation into what happened was "still ongoing".

And:

Sheldon said that while he supported debate and discussion during council meetings, "this should never accelerate into aggression aimed at individuals".

In his resignation letter to the Conservative group, he wrote: "The aggressive bawling and shouting at officials and the foolish name calling is behaviour I cannot accept.

"At the request of the mayor, I asked the two members to apologise for their actions and this was declined.

"I feel my position has been undermined and will be unable to gain the respect I deserve."

All of which reinforces my impression that Conservative councillors aren't what they used to be and that the party is close to ungovernable.