Liverpool Lib Dem boss accused of using "sex appeal to build fanbase" in cover shoot

Today the Liverpool Echo walks off with our Headline of the Day Award.

The judges requested several copies of Attitude. #JustSayin

GUEST POST Let next week's online summer school rekindle your Radical Liberal fire

William Lane invites you to an exciting online event being organised by the John Stuart Mill Institute and the Social Liberal Forum.

As Liberals, it is easy to feel despondent in the current political moment. The last few decades have told a tale of retreat from Liberal values globally, with rising authoritarianism across the world and a growing cynicism gnawing at the heart of established liberal democracies.

Our horizons are shrinking as the world grows ever smaller and more insular, riven with fear and mistrust, and it feels like many of our cherished values are facingpushback across the globe. The far right rises on the back of political hopelessness, states and businesses monitor us ever more closely, and people feel more and more disconnected from each other and their communities.

Yeats’s famous lines will resonate with many of us:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

But we must not give in to despair. Our political tendency, the tendency that has ushered in an age of unparalleled prosperity across the globe, is capable of astonishing regrowth and renewal.

Liberalism did not become the dominant global ideology overnight, it had to fight hard and fast against entrenched political and social interests, while also contending with the ideological threats of absolute monarchy, fascism and state communism. 

In our age of rising political tension, economic stagnation and growing authoritarian threat, we need to rediscover the social and political dynamism that made Liberal thought and politics so incisive in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The John Stuart Mill Institute and Social Liberal Forum are leading that charge, by launching an online Radical Liberal Summer School that is taking place from the 11-13 August. Through lectures, Q&As and panel discussions we hope to rekindle some of that old Liberal fire, and contribute to an as yet small but growing spirit of Liberal revivalism.

Join us next week for fascinating discussions on individual freedom, economic empowerment, foreign policy and workplace democracy. We will be hosting prominent politicians, philosophers and academics including Bobby Dean MP, Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle, Cllr Carl Cashman and Frances Foley.

For full details and to book your place, go the the event's webpage. We look forward to seeing you next week.

William Lane is senior researcher at the John Stuart Mill Institute.

Carl Cashman: Lib Dems can take control of Liverpool in 2027

Carl Cashman says be believes Liverpool, which we ran between 1998 and 2010, could be the first core city in the UK to return to Liberal Democrat control. 

In an interview with the Liverpool Echo to mark the second anniversary of his becoming leader of the Lib Dem group on the city council, he talks of people's disappointment with the Labour government and the opportunities and responsibilities it brings:

“I thought they would at least have a little bit of a honeymoon, but it's been quite clear to me that there's been a backlash from that and I think there's a big onus for us to take that mantle on and getting those people that are disillusioned with the Labour Party and support us and not to go to other people, particularly Reform. 

“I think from what I'm seeing in the canvas returns, that that is happening, and, you know, we're campaigning in places that we have in campaigning for a very, very long time, and people have seemed quite happy to see us, and that's been reflected in some of the results that we've been getting recently.”

And he names the two policies he would implement at once: a council tax freeze and a return to building of council houses again.

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."