"We have blue passports, but everything else has gone south": Andrew George on the failure of Brexit

Andrew George won back the St Ives constituency in Cornwall for the Liberal Democrats two years ago today – he had previously represented it between 1997 and 2015. 

It's estimated that there was a 54.8 per cent vote for Leave in St Ives at the 2016 referendum, but that hasn't stopped Andrew telling it like it is in the Bude & Stratton Post:

There’s been much commentary on the 10th anniversary of Brexit referendum. I viewed it as a test of UK self-confidence. In the event the answer was negative. That we didn’t see ourselves as leaders in Europe. That we believed we were being taken advantage of, and had become rule-takers and had lost control.

That’s not to say I believed there would be no benefits from Brexit. I acknowledged at the time there was potential to "take back control" of fisheries management and marine conservation. However, even that hasn't materialised. Indeed, it's worse – we’re now outside the rooms where decisions are made and have less influence.

Yes, we have blue passports(!), but everything else has gone south. All authoritative sources agree the economy has suffered; now estimated to be at least six per cent smaller than it would have been. Brexit has been a drag on trade and growth, seen a cut in investment, and opportunities – especially for younger people – have shrunk.

Cornwall has been a major loser after decades of EU support. Promises of replacement funding didn’t materialise. I respect those who voted to Leave, and their hopes and desires. But those who led the Brexit campaign should stand up and be accountable. Their lies and stoking of fear may have succeeded, but they it says everything that they have largely avoided public attention during this 10-year review.

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"I am speaking out today because many more asylum-seeking children are at risk due to plans to withdraw support and forcibly remove children whose families have failed asylum claims." The children’s commissioner Rachel de Souza says no child should be made destitute to enforce harmful immigration rules.

Zoe Grunewald finds that Brexit has made worse the very problems it was promised it would solve: "What comes in the next decade depends entirely on whether Britain’s mainstream politicians can finally do what it has spent the previous decade refusing to: tell the truth about what Brexit did, who bears the cost, and why the man promising to fix it helped cause it all in the first place."

"That Tory share was its lowest in all 17 sets of full London borough council elections ever held. It was also smaller than every vote share won by the Conservatives in the Greater London administrative area – formally created in April 1965 – in the 16 general elections held since that year." Barnaby Towns finds that the Conservatives are still going backwards in London.

Susanna Crossman sets out to learn more about the beliefs and practices of the folk healers called 'fire-tamers' who operate an "alternative, unofficial and ancient grassroots system of care" across France.

"He swiped, slogged and occasionally savaged, under the guise of scoring 'easier' runs against the new ball given how this pitch is playing. Instead, his 30 off 20 balls created a febrile storm that swept up Jacob Bethell, Harry Brook and Ben Duckett." Vithushan Ehantharajah watches Ben Stokes' last Sunday as England's captain.

Moreau Vazh finds that Witchfinder General, despite its place in the folk horror canon, most closely resembles a Sam Peckinpah Western.

No, Leave didn't win the Brexit referendum because of Northern working class voters

There are so many myths, and so much snobbery, surrounding the result of the 2016 referendum that I've a good mind to post this every week.

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"In the Wigan constituency, which has always been Labour-held but where Reform picked up 24 out of 25 seats in last month’s local elections, the governing party’s by-election message is focused squarely on Burnham. It is a cartoon of his face emblazoned across leaflets and Correx boards, along with the words “ANDY FOR US”. Labour branding is limited, pretty much, to what is legally required." Sienna Rodgers takes us inside the Labour campaign in the Makerfield by-election.

Lucia Osborne-Crowley interviews Gisèle Pelicot, whose courage transformed the debate around abuse, about survival, reclaiming confidence – and shutting down the tools of sexual exploitation.

Flip Chart Fairy Tales notes the end of the right's state-shrinking dream: "Far from Brexit being the cue for the Thatcher revolution’s last phase, it may mark the end of it altogether. ... It’s no wonder the small-staters are so exercised. They have now realised that tomorrow belongs to someone else."

"When you launch a product that's designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn't that you haven't told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them." Brian Phillips nominates the 40 most rage-inducing problems in tech.

JacquiWine praises Rumer Godden's novel The Battle of the Villa Fiorita: "I loved this evocative, immersive read, a psychologically astute exploration of the impact of a woman’s adulterous affair and subsequent divorce on her two adolescent children, fourteen-year-old Hugh Clavering and his younger sister Caddie, who is almost twelve."

"Born in 1918, Denys Fisher was raised in a railway carriage in a field in Leeds in a family full of inventors, free thinkers, and social reformists with connections to women's suffrage." Eleanor Tait talks to Duncan Fisher about his father, the man who invented Spirograph.

The Shortest History of Ireland by James Hawes

This review appears in the new Liberator – issue 435. You can download it free of charge from the magazine's website.

The Shortest History of Ireland

James Hawes

Old Street, 2026, £15

Teachers tried to tell you many things when you weren’t listening properly, but here’s some history they really didn’t teach you at school. James Hawes tells the story of Ireland from the earliest times to the present day in a way that is constantly surprising and enlightening. I shall first urge you to read this book and then share a few of its most startling insights.

One of the keys to understanding Ireland is that it was never part of the Roman Empire and was thus spared the dislocation that the rest of Europe suffered when that empire fell. Christianity came to Ireland, but it was assimilated into what was in many ways a highly developed Iron Age civilisation. So in the early Medieval period, when Ireland’s population was half of England’s, not the tenth it is today, Irish scholars were prized across Europe, but their independent ways increasingly met with disapproval from thde church authorities in Rome.

The first colonisers of Ireland were not English but French. The Normans who took land there had not troubled to learn English to speak to the serfs they brought with them, but they did learn Gaelic so they could talk to their neighbours. The result was that those Normans soon adopted Irish customs, while the serfs saw many attractions in deserting their positions and becoming Irish. This consistent tendency of settlers to turn Irish frustrated the English Crown’s ambitions: when England finally turned a serious imperialist gaze on Ireland in 1546, the only part of the country it controlled was Dublin. Elizabeth I’s court astrologer John Dee, incidentally, emerges as the first person to have talked of a British empire.

We English tend to see Ireland as sectarian, but the truth is that we exported it there. It was Protestant England that was sectarian, and it saw people who turned Irish as traitors. It was this attitude that explained the massacre of the garrison at Drogheda, and there were plenty of more extreme figures back at Westminster cheering Cromwell on. This was an England, as Hawes reminds us, that did not care that neither William III nor George I could speak English. The only thing that mattered was that they were not Catholic.

In the 19th century Britain spent a fortune trying to turn Ireland into a landscape of small Protestant farmers. The ruins of unwanted Anglican churches across Ireland are a reminder of this doomed project, while the payments to these uneconomically small arable farms. in what had historically been cattle country, were a heavy burden on independent Ireland until it joined the European Economic Community and its Common Agricultural Policy in 1971.

Finally, Hawes shows that the Catholic dominance of Irish society was a post-independence creation and did not fully establish itself until 1937. This dominance, with its satanic trio of institutions – industrial schools, mother and baby homes, Magdalene laundries – was the work of Éamon de Valera, the politician who dominated the first 50 years of the independent Ireland, and Archbishop John McQuaid of Dublin. Hawes likens de Valera, with his control of the press and closeness to the church, to one of the authoritarian leaders who flourish in Eastern Europe today.

And the book ends on an optimistic note: not even Brexit has slowed the economic and social forces making an eventual reunification look increasingly likely.

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"The taboo around the word 'membership' has been maintained not by principle but timidity. Farage built his project on lies. The least we can do is have the courage to tell the truth about what those lies have cost us in our classrooms, laboratories, training colleges, concert halls, and our standing in a world that badly needs Britain to be more than a bystander." Caroline Lucas goes where Certain Other Politicians fear to tread.

Barry Gardiner points to an important lesson of the Mandelson affair: "Most leaders surround themselves with people who tell them what they think they want to hear. Good leaders surround themselves with people who are not afraid to tell them the truth."

"Just as Hitler’s failures led him to resent the German people ever more strongly and destructively, we can expect Trump’s growing frustration to result in ever more nihilistic and destructive actions as his term moves toward its end." David R. Lurie warns about what may come next from Trump: 

Samantha Booth and Ruth Lucas report on worries that the effects of poverty and deprivation are being treating as Special Educational Needs, relocating what is a social problem in the psyches of individual children.

"The first exhibition space includes several of Eardley's social-realist figure depictions of 1950s inner-city Glaswegian children. The works have a joyful, raw, playful spirit to them, in spite of the squalid slum environment the children were living in. No artist has painted Glasgow's 'weans'  in the way that Eardley has." Blane Savage on the Joan Eardley exhibition at National Galleries Scotland: Modern Two.

John Connors pays tribute to Richard Carpenter's long career in children's television from Catweazle to I Was a Rat.

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"These settings are not registered – as they should be by law – with Ofsted. They are meant to be temporary, but a recent report by the children’s commissioner found the average placement lasted six months – one child had been in a 'holiday camp/activity centre' for almost nine months." Alexandra Topping explains why social workers are forced to place children in unregistered homes.

Heather Stewart analyses Labour's crabwise approach to closer economic ties with the EU.

Richard Kemp condemns the snobbery behind the use of classical music to disperse groups of young people: "I have instead asked the Council and Police to support the 'In Harmony' programme of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic which is taking music playing into some of the most deprived areas of Liverpool both during the day and evening. During the day they ensure that every child in three schools gets to play a musical instrument for an hour a week for three years."

"I hope what comes across at the end is an invitation for people to consider the aspects of British culture that they want to celebrate. Albion can't be determined by me; this is a personal quest and a personal vision of the aspects of Britishness that I feel need to be celebrated. It's an invitation for people to say: "I have a stake here, and what do I want to champion?" Zakia Sewell talks to Michaela Makusha about her first book, Finding Albion.

Rob Hakimian reports on a scheme to use the Grand Union Canal to transfer water from the Midlands to London and the South East.

"I have a soft spot for Waddon (1937). Beneath garish commercial signage is a striking Modernist building which can hold its own against any inter-war Tube station." Daniel Wright takes us on a tour of the South London railway stations built between the wars to rival the striking architecture of those on the Underground.

Ed Davey flattens Nigel Farage on human rights

On 29 October last year, Nigel Farage put forward his European Convention on Human Rights (Withdrawal) Bill. You can read his speech in Hansard.

This, in full, was Ed Davey's reply:

The speech we just heard totally misrepresents the European convention, and the failure of the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) to mention the huge benefits and rights that the European convention has brought to millions of British people says it all. Let me give those attracted by the argument we have just heard one strong reason to think again. Russia under Vladimir Putin is the only country to have withdrawn from the European convention on human rights. Maybe that is what attracts the hon. Member—after all, he said that Putin is the world leader he most admires.

Russia: a country where those who oppose the regime are mysteriously pushed off balconies, and where, if it is not enough to murder a political opponent like Alexei Navalny, Putin has even jailed lawyers who dared to represent him—things not allowed under the European convention. As we have seen Nathan Gill, a leading political ally of the hon. Member for Clacton, imprisoned for taking Russian bribes, perhaps we should not be surprised that the Reform party is so keen to follow Russia.

Besides Russia, where else are people’s hard-fought-for rights under attack? Trump’s America. Of course, the US is not part of the European convention, yet its citizens have benefited from something similar: the US constitution, which was designed to check the power of tyrants and protect the individual from the state. Just as the hon. Member for Clacton desires to remove people’s rights here, his hero Donald Trump is doing the same in America, attacking the courts and the rule of law, and even inciting a violent mob against the US Congress to overturn an election. But of course, the hon. Member has called President Trump “an inspiration”. If we want to know the hon. Member’s intentions for British people’s basic rights and freedoms, we only need to look at Putin’s Russia or Trump’s America. That is not patriotic. It is deeply un-British, and he should be ashamed.

Unlike the hon. Member for Clacton, I am proud of our country; I love our country. I am proud that Britain helped to create the European convention on human rights, championed by Winston Churchill himself. The convention protects the very people who need it most: our elderly and most vulnerable, so that they may live and grow old with dignity; and our children, so that those facing horrific abuse have better protection. It also upholds our freedom of speech so that the press and public can criticise those in power without fear, and it protects our right to peaceful protest.

Seventy years ago, Britain became the first country to ratify the convention, as a leading voice on the global stage for human rights and the rule of law. That is our history. That is who we are. That is Britain at our best. Yet the hon. Member for Clacton wants us to forget our history, dump British values, undermine the rule of law and row back on people’s hard-won rights. I say no.

To help get across how wrong the hon. Member, the Reform party and the Conservatives are on this, let me give some examples. When people died because of poor care at Stafford hospital, their families secured change—because of these laws. When British troops died in Iraq because of poor equipment, the Supreme Court ruled that the Government were accountable—because of these laws. After 96 people were killed in the Hillsborough disaster and the victims themselves were blamed, their families finally got to the truth—because of these laws. When the Metropolitan police failed to properly investigate the horrific assaults of John Worboys, his victims were able to take the police to court—because of these laws.

Time and again, the European convention and its British twin, the Human Rights Act, have brought justice for our people, and protected them from gross misconduct and unfair treatment. These laws help individuals hold the powerful to account—to hold Governments to account. These laws can get justice when the elite and powerful cover up and abuse their power. So it is clear, is it not, that the hon. Member for Clacton is not about standing up for the individual—for the ordinary person, for the people with no voice—but that he is the friend of the elite and the powerful?

If we do not defend our human rights here at home, how can we possibly persuade other countries of the importance of human rights for their own people? If we do what Reform wants, the biggest cheers will come from the Kremlin, from Beijing, from Tehran, from Pyongyang, and from dictators and authoritarian regimes the world over. That would be a betrayal of everything our country stands for. The hon. Member’s plan would damage our country’s ability to shape our world.

Leaving the convention would be another nail in the coffin of Britain’s unique soft power. We have so often influenced world events for the better by being part of international agreements, by upholding international law and by leading. Of course, the hon. Member for Clacton has made his career by damaging our country and our influence. Remember how he led the campaign for Brexit with his Conservative friends? We know what a total mess that has turned out to be. He and his friends argued that Brexit would cut immigration, but immigration has gone up. Just look at how badly he has betrayed the people he claims to speak for. Brexit made the small boats crisis possible.

Before Brexit, we effectively had a returns agreement with every EU country: the Dublin system—a deterrent that worked. Now, undocumented migrants are trying to reach the UK because they know they cannot be returned. Thanks to the hon. Member, his Brexit ripped up Britain’s rights to return people with no right to be here and people who should have claimed asylum elsewhere in Europe. [Interruption.] Conservative Members may shout—they caused it!

Let us look at one of our closest allies, the Republic of Ireland, and a vital part of our country, Northern Ireland. The Good Friday agreement references the European convention seven times. The guarantee of basic rights and freedoms in the convention was fundamental to securing the Good Friday agreement, to ending the conflict, to stopping the bombs and to getting peace, yet the hon. Member for Clacton stands here today prepared to risk peace in our country—how utterly shameful.

As we approach Remembrance Sunday, let us never forget the sacrifices made for our freedoms today, and let us never forget the lessons that that greatest generation of British people learned and passed on to us— Interruption.] I think the veterans will notice this barracking. Our greatest generation showed us that we needed these laws to protect people from state abuse, to stop authoritarian Governments and tyrants, and to defend people’s rights. The post-war generation knew how costly far right-wing populism had been for our country and our people, so for our greatest generation, for British people today and for our democracy, I urge Members to vote against this Bill.

If the Liberal Democrats could talk about the economy with the same clarity and passion we display when talking about foreign policy and civil liberties, we would sweep the country.

Producer of Brexit: The Movie jailed for fraud

And not before time, you may very well think.

BBC News reports:

A film producer who lied about his income to secure a £519,000 loan has been jailed for more than three years.

David Shipley, 37, admitted editing images of his payslips and P60 to "over-inflate" his income to obtain money, Southwark Crown Court heard.

He is credited with producing the 2016 documentary film Brexit: The Movie, which promoted the UK's departure from the European Union.

Judge Martin Griffith said his actions were "a blatant piece of dishonesty".

Quite. And to be precise, he got three years and nine months and was disqualified from being a company director for seven years.

Released in the weeks before the June 2016 referendum, Brexit: The Movie was a feature-length documentary advocating Britain's departure from the European Union.

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David Howarth says Liberal Democrats should attack Brexit, not just "the Tories' botched Brexit deal".

"Many have had to take extensive measures to protect their staff and service users. They’ve hired security guards, put trackers on phones, removed company listings and names from websites. In some cases, they’ve even installed safe rooms." Nicola Kelly describes how far-right attacks against refugee charities are causing workers to leave the sector to protect themselves.

"Unable to defeat Ukraine quickly or force political capitulation in Kyiv, Russia has expanded the battlefield into the daily life of European societies. Moscow’s objective is clear: weaken Western unity by creating a constant sense of vulnerability, without crossing the threshold that would trigger a formal NATO response. This pressure is increasingly visible in Poland and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe." Piotr Arak on Russia's use of sabotage to wear down Europe

Louise Murphy explodes three myths about NEETs – young people who are not it education, employment or training.

Pete Paphides celebrates Madness and their song The Liberty of Norton Folgate.

"The main robbery takes place around the industrial warehouses that once sat behind King’s Cross. As vast changes and development has taken place, exactly recreating these shots is difficult. However, using old maps of the area, many shots can be roughly mapped." Adam Scovell goes in search of the locations used by the makers of The Ladykillers in 1955

Those Labour MPs who voted for (and against) the Lib Dem customs union bill in full

Embed from Getty Images

Labour List has helpfully printed the names of the 13 Labour MPs who voted for the Liberal Democrat customs union bill yesterday and the 3 who voted against.

For the bill

• Sadik Al-Hassan (North Somerset)
• Fleur Anderson (Putney)
• Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower)
• Richard Burgon (Leeds East)
• Dawn Butler (Brent East)
• Marsha de Cordova (Battersea)
• Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch)
• Imran Hussain (Bradford East)
• Afzal Khan (Manchester Rusholme)
• Peter Lamb (Crawley)
• James Naish (Rushcliffe)
• Simon Opher (Stroud)
• Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill)

Against the Bill

• Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool)
• Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland)
• Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase)

It's interesting that there are some old lags of the left on the side of the angels, which you wouldn't necessarily have expected. On the other side, Jonathan Brash is a fully signed-up member of Blue Labour.

Though if I were creating an overambitious Labour MP for satirical purposes, Jonathan Brash is just the name I'd choose.

Peter Kellner: The pro-Brexit majority of 2016 has literally died out

Huffington Post had gone behind the New World (formerly New European) paywall and emerged with a story about the level of public support for Brexit today:

Peter Kellner, who founded YouGov and sat as its president until 2016 – the year of the Brexit referendum – predicted that there’s most likely a majority of 8 million now in favour of rejoining the bloc.

And, because psephology is a heartless science, he said a lot more, beginning with the observation that more than six million Britons have died since 2016:

Considering the turnout among older voters was higher than average and that 64 per cent of over-65s backed Brexit, he said it is safe to assume 3.2 million pro-Leave voters have died in the last nine years, compared to 1.8 million Remainers.

Kellner said: "This means that among people who are alive today and who voted in the 2016 referendum, Remainers exceed Leavers by 14.3 to 14.2 million."

In addition, the pollster pointed out that the six million young people who have reached voting age since 2016 are more likely to be pro-EU.

Even if just three million of them were to actually vote in a future referendum, that would take the Remain majority to two million.

If you also take account of the Leave voters who have changed their minds since the referendum, then you arrive at Kelner's estimate of an 8 million majority for Remain today.

All of which means our government's policy on Europe is heavily influenced by a desire not to alienate dead people.

Liz Truss's drive for Stilton exports to Japan proved a flop

Reader's voice: Shall I say it?

Liberal England replies: Go on then.

Reader: That. Is. A. Disgrace.

Liberal England: Thank you.

Liz Truss flew to Tokyo to sign Britain’s first post-Brexit trade deal five years ago this week. She took with her a small jar of Stilton cheese.

The deal was largely a rollover of the one the European Union already had with Japan, but Truss had fought for better access for Stilton and cheddar.

And, as a token of her appreciation of the liberalising of the Japanese market, she presented the Japanese foreign secretary Motegi Toshimitsu with the Silton as they signed the deal on 22 October 2020.

But, says Graham Lanktree on Politico, there has been no Stilton boom in Japan. He quotes George Hyde, the Food and Drink Federation’s head of trade:

 "The story for cheese exports, unfortunately, shows a clear decline in recent years. UK cheese sales to Japan peaked at £2.2 million in 2019, but have fallen every year since, and were down two-thirds in 2024 despite tariff advantages."

 So she won't be offered the Freedom of Melton Mowbray any time soon.

The Leave campaign – Nigel Farage included – called for more non-EU migration to Britain

You'd never know it from the debate on immigration today, but:

In 2016, the official Vote Leave campaign actively advocated for more immigration from non-European countries. This wasn’t a fringe message – it was a central pillar of the campaign. 

This is a quote from an excellent article by Sam Bright, who reminds us that "every element of the Brexit campaign advocated for more non-white immigration – including Nigel Farage".

He backs this with quotes from a contemporary Financial Times report on Leave strategy and from Saqib Bhatti (now a Conservative MP and shadow education minister), Gisela Stuart, Priti Patel, Daniel Hannan, Boris Johnson and Douglas Carswell.

And here's what Nigel Farage had to say during the referendum campaign:

A Daily Mail headline on 8 June 2016 stated:

"More black people will be allowed into Britain if we leave the EU and immigration will become a ‘non-issue’, says Nigel Farage."

Farage claimed that Britain had:

"been stupid to turn our backs on the Commonwealth in favour of EU membership."

He argued that EU freedom of movement had made it "very difficult" for "qualified and skilled migrants from India and Africa" to come to Britain.

According to The Mail, after the Brexit vote, Farage favoured implementing an Australian points-based immigration policy, which would lead to “more black people” qualifying to enter the UK.

Ironically, Boris Johnson’s government – now the whipping boy of the far-right – implemented a points-based immigration system that directly reflected Farage’s favoured position prior to the vote.

That none of this is ever mentioned is a condemnation of the British media and of our politicians.

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Chris Grey analyses the dangers of the new far right in Britain: "It seems to be quite different to earlier versions of far-right politics which, whilst aggressively anti-immigration, were not, apart from a very small fringe, intent on a wholesale overthrow of the established political order. Yet, now, it is becoming almost mainstream to speak as if that political order has entirely failed." 

"It saddens me to say that Israel today seems to be a world away from the inclusive, pluralistic, open and democratic principles on which it was founded in 1948." Labour MP Peter Prinsley, who is a doctor and Jewish, writes about his experience of being denied entry to Israel.

"The exact movements of the train are kept secret for fear of terrorism – in 1886, Queen Victoria’s train was reportedly targeted by Fenians. But we know the train is only used very infrequently, not least because it is so expensive to move out of its shed at Wolverton near Milton Keynes." Christian Wolmar agues that the demise of the Royal Train was inevitable.

Owen Hatherley says one of the clearest markers of Britain’s civic downslide in recent decades is the slow cancellation of its once plentiful provision of public toilets.

"[Herbert] Howells and [Ivor] Gurney walked the streets of Gloucester into the early hours that night, excitedly debating what the Tallis Fantasia might mean for the future." Terry Blain tells the story of the first-ever performance of the Tallis Fantasia in the city's cathedral as part of the 1910 Three Choirs Festival.

Roger French takes the bus from Nuneaton to Leicester.

Ed Davey: Brexit has been a disaster and Starmer must find the courage to change course

Ed Davey has a comment piece on the Guardian website this afternoon, which will presumably be in tomorrow's paper:

Brexit isn’t working, and the British people know it. Poll after poll, including that unveiled this weekend by More In Common for the Sunday Times, shows that people are feeling the terrible damage caused by the deal forced upon us by Boris Johnson, Kemi Badenoch and the rest of the Conservative party, and want something different. The latest shows less than a third of Britons would vote to leave the EU if a referendum were repeated. 

There’s no doubt that fundamental change is needed. There’s no doubt the public will is there to make it happen. The question is: will Keir Starmer seize the moment and deliver it?

This is just the line he should be taking. The sad thing is that Starmer does not appear to be one for seizing moments.

Johnson's name is still poison, and it's good politics to associate Badenoch with the Brexit disaster. But what really did the damage was Theresa May's insistence on leaving the Single Market, which she justified with the mindless slogan "Brexit means Brexit".

That speech was written for her by Nick Timothy - it's arguable that no one alive has done as much to damage Britain. How did the Conservatives reward him? By selecting him as their candidate for a seat that, even in the rout of last year's general election, they could not lose.

Manuela Perteghella: "Young people want closer ties with Europe - they know the rights they have lost"

Manuela Perteghella believes Britain will one day rejoin the European Union. 

Asked in an interview with the Europe Street news agency if she thinks such a move will ever take place, the Liberal Democrat MP for Stratford upon Avon replies:

"In my opinion yes, because it is important for the UK to have partners who care about the future of Europe. ... When I speak in schools, it is clear that young people want closer ties with Europe. They know the rights they have lost with Brexit and they want to experience Europe without hurdles, so I hope the new generation will take us back into the EU, where our place is."

She is also critical of Labour's and others' rhetoric on immigration:

"The language that we have heard recently reopened old wounds and reignited the toxic debate of the Brexit campaign, while immigrants have over the centuries enriched massively British society. We need to have an honest debate and my mission will be even more to highlight this."

And, as an expert in the translation of British drama, including Shakespeare’s work, Manuela speaks of the "huge honour" of representing his birthplace in parliament.

From Liberator: Such people write about Lincolnshire as though they were Victorian explorers or missionaries

The new Liberator - issue 429 - is out and can be downloaded free of charge from the magazine's website.

As well as Lord Bonkers' Diary and a book review of mine, it includes this article. I wrote it in response to the local election results of 1 May.

In Search of Their Motives

Why did Reform UK do so well in the local elections? How should parties respond to their rise? Who exactly is voting for them?

Some would tell you to wait for the academics to crunch the numbers, but if you go to the research on how and why Leave won the 2016 European Union referendum then you find, as so often the case in academia, not a body of agreed conclusions but a loose bundle of continuing debates. So rather than wait for a consensus that may never emerge, I’m going to do what I can here to clear what seem to me widespread misconceptions about Reform and their voters.

To begin with, the success of Reform should not shock or even surprise us. Ukip polled more than any other party in the 2014 elections to the European parliament, receiving 26.6 per cent of the vote and electing 24 of the UK’s 73 MEPs. Five years later, the Brexit Party did even better, electing 29 MEPs and receiving 30.5 per cent of the vote, slightly more than Reform UK won in this year’s local elections.

These three successes were achieved by Nigel Farage under three different party names, which reminds us that the far right has always been prepared to form parties, break them up and form new ones until they hit upon an arrangement that attracts voters. It also reminds us that Farage has been key to their successes, but we should have grasped years ago that there is no reason to expect us to be immune to the rise of the far right that has taken place across Western Europe in recent years. Despite leaving the EU, Britain now finds itself with a thoroughly European party system that includes a substantial party that stands to the right of the Conservative Party. This may well be the new normal.

After the EU referendum, Leave’s victory was widely attributed to a desire for revenge by left-behind areas. This narrative had its appeal to some on the left, because you could argue that it made the disastrous outcome of that vote all George Osborne’s fault, but I was never convinced. It seemed rooted in a dated, even nostalgic, view of the working class as white, male and engaged until recently in heavy industry. Yes, big changes have taken place in working class employment, but they took place some decades ago. The Full Monty and Brassed Off came out in the mid-1990s, and both were looking back on a transformation that had already taken place.

Yet a disaffected working-class was the first explanation many reached for to account for Reform’s successes on 1 May. Liberal Democrat Voice, for instance, immediately ran an article that argued Reform is “hoovering up votes across the country by doing one simple thing: articulating the grievances of the working classes”. It was good to see an article on that blog which talked about inequality and social class, but I don’t buy its thesis that Reform’s vote came solely from an aggrieved working class. Even in Durham, where Reform swept away a previously solid Labour majority, the figures show that it won a large slice of the votes that previously went to Conservatives and Independents as well as taking votes from Labour.

What I found most striking about the local elections was the collapse of Tory Midland England. Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire all fell to Reform, while Leicestershire now has a minority Reform administration. Even amid the Liberal Democrat triumph in Shropshire, Reform won enough seats to become the largest opposition group on the new council. While all these shires contain areas of widespread poverty and areas of Labour strength, it was the Conservative Party that took a hammering.

It seems to me that the Reform vote is best regarded as a protest vote – a concept we Liberals should be very much at home with, because we depended upon such a vote for survival and occasional upturns for decades. The late, great David Penhaligon was given to suggesting that a “Stuff Em All Party” would do well at the polls, and that is how Reform is seen by many voters, which is perhaps something we miss in our anxiety to condemn Nigel Farage’s views on race or the latest member found to have once espoused Fascist views on social media.

Whether you blame the economic situation it inherited or its lack of ambition, this Labour government is proving a sore disappointment to many who voted for it, while the thoughts of habitual Conservative voters can only be imagined. They now find themselves faced with a leader who is older than Tony Blair or David Cameron was when they came to power, yet comes over as a spiteful child. The majority of her MPs, meanwhile, hesitate to remove her for fear of who the party’s membership might land them with next. 

So you can see why there’s now a ready market for the Stuff Em All Party. Meanwhile, we Lib Dems can choose between being disappointed that our concentration in the affluent South means we are no longer viewed in that light, and taking this as a sign we are beginning to have a more coherent policy profile with voters.

Having managed to fake authenticity, Nigel Farage has made himself a better media performer than either Keir Starmer or Kemi Badenoch. It’s not so much that he comes over as being more fun to go for a drink with: it’s more that you can’t imagine the other two going for a drink at all. Added to that, now and then Farage does show political nous – he resisted the temptation to court Elon Musk and his money by embracing Tommy Robinson, sensing that one of his weaknesses is that he is already seen as too close to Trump and Putin.

In a thoughtful piece for Compass, Olly Glover, the Lib Dem MP for Didcot & Wantage, wrote of it becoming “increasingly common to encounter voters who are open about their intention to vote Reform. A surprising number of these were choosing between Reform and Lib Dem.”

He continued:

Voters’ reasons for considering Reform are more varied than might be assumed, with scepticism about net zero and climate change commitments now as common as concerns about immigration. 

Uniting them all is widespread cynicism and loss of confidence in the entire political system and the British state. This aspect is shared with many non-Reform voters too, but Reform have captured the bulk of the ‘anti-establishment’ sentiment.

And Dr Nathan Ley, a Lib Dem councillor from Abingdon, has written on his [now vanished] Substack that Reform is now:

The repository for some voters who are angry, dispossessed, downtrodden, as well as lots of people who are actually quite comfortable with their life, but feeling just a bit bored.

Labour is pinning its hopes on recovering these disaffected votes simply by governing better and producing visible improvements by the next election. This ambition does not seem to extend much beyond the NHS: elsewhere the government is continuing the austerity its members devoted fourteen years of their lives to condemning.

I wish Labour well in this endeavour, but they are going to have to find better communicators to put their case across. If Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves gave a fireside chat, you fear the fire would go out.

It’s hard to know what to advise the Conservatives to do. The most significant voting pattern of the 2016 referendum has always seemed to me the way that great swathes of prosperous Southern England voted Leave. You can blame David Cameron – if a prime minister puts a choice to voters in a referendum, they are entitled to assume that both paths are reasonable ones for the country to take – and I wouldn’t discount Dr Ley’s observation that voters were a bit bored. But what happened to all those Southern Tories with a fat stake in the status quo and a determination to keep things pretty much as they are?

I would look to the disappearance of responsible clerical and middle-management positions to technology and cost-cutting, and to the difficulty most people now experience in getting on the property ladder. David Boyle wrote a book about these trends, Broke: Who Killed the Middle Classes?, back in 2014. [The link is to a radio programme based on the book.]

Beyond this, there has been a collapse in Conservative values to such an extent that it’s possible to argue that the Conservative Party’s fundamental problem is that it’s no longer Conservative. It was said of Margaret Thatcher that she hoped her policies would produce more men like her father, but she ended up producing more men like her son.

And for Liberal Democrats? We should be wary of habits that it is too easy to learn online. One reason I distrust the argument that Reform is winning on working-class votes alone is that it plays into a snobbish view of the working class held by some people who imagine themselves to be left wing. The working class, they believe, is, like anyone who disagrees with them, stupid.

Such people write about, say, Lincolnshire as though they were Victorian explorers or missionaries, complete with a party of native bearers carrying their aspidistra and upright piano, but instead of cleft sticks to send messages, they use smartphones. They paint the county as impoverished, sexist, racist and any other ist you care to mention. This view is backed up by some small-town boys who praise themselves for having escaped it.

Yet Lincolnshire voted in line with the rest of the country in the 1975 referendum on continued membership of the European Economic Community – two-to-one in favour. And, years after that, Liberal candidates piled up huge votes in coming second in constituencies like Gainsborough & Horncastle and East Lindsey. In the latter, which is largely the Boston & Skegness constituency now represented by Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform, the Liberal Alliance polled over 20,000 votes at the 1987 general election. 

Politics is rarely as simple as online debate makes it appear.

"Join the Lib Dems, stop moaning on Facebook and get involved": Leigh Frost did and now he's leader of Cornwall Council

"I was a big Remainer and still am. I believe that we had a lot of benefits from being members of the European Union. A vote to leave the European Union basically gave you less rights and I didn’t like the fact my children would grow up with less rights than I had.

"I became one of those ranty people on Facebook about why Brexit was a bad idea. Dan Rogerson [former Lib Dem MP for North Cornwall] sent me a message telling me I should join the Lib Dems, stop moaning on Facebook and get involved." Mr Rogerson, a newly elected councillor, is now a member of Cllr Frost’s Cabinet.

And now Leigh Frost is the Liberal Democrat leader of Cornwall, where we have formed a minority administration with the Independents. He talked to the Falmouth Packet ("in his treasured Bodmin") about his ambitions for the council:

"We need more affordable homes. The Government has set its target, which we all know is a bit of a fantasy in reality, but we’ve got to try and deliver the best we can. We need a mix of sizes. One of the biggest issues is we do not build enough one and two beds, so there’s nowhere for people to downsize to.

"There’s a whole range of housing stock that could be unlocked just by building more smaller properties. It’s not just about developing more, it’s about being smarter about how we produce the best from our existing stock."

He also pointed to the huge challenge that children's services are for all councils and his ambitions to use the council's powers to improve the dentistry service in the county.

The Joy of Six 1366

"Our shared values and security pacts with Europe may eventually lead to a different ‘special relationship’ than the one we believed we had. A swift referendum, though likely to reverse Brexit, wouldn’t be sustainable (or trusted by the EU) if it leaves too many voters entrenched in old biases. So it’s baby steps for now, while the media and government catch up with changing attitudes." Jenny Rhodes looks at the UK/EU relationship after last month's reasonably successful summit.

Toby Buckle argues that the dominant narrative explaining the appeal of Donald Trump has got it all wrong: "Far-left radicals, socialists, liberals, centrists, old-fashioned conservatives, academics, mainstream journalists, and everyone else who simply cannot imagine voting for the man themselves, all tend to default to one narrative: Many Americans are struggling economically, left behind, urgently wanting a more egalitarian society, and turned to a fascist movement in desperation."

Gregory McElwain on the importance of the philosopher Mary Midgeley.

"Los Angeles’ roads have contributed to climate change not only for the obvious ways in which they’ve encouraged the extraction and consumption of petroleum-derived fuels. They’ve also contributed to climate change in the way they’ve required the drying-out of millions of cubic-feet of soil - soil that, were it still wet, would do much to moderate the severe wildfire events that will continue to reshape the city’s urban landscape and livability in this century." Charlotte Leib looks at what a century of landscape manipulation has done to Los Angeles.

Nadia Khomami reports on new research that suggests the novelist Barbara Pym may have worked for MI5.

"While today a dot ball in limited-overs cricket is often seen as an achievement, in 1969 a Somerset spinner finished with figures of 8-8-0-0 in a 40-over match." Martin Williamson remembers a bowling fear by Brian Langford that will never be repeated.