Malcolm Bruce: Cutting overseas development aid would be unconscionable

Having fought two general elections in quick succession on a pledge to maintain the commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on development assistance for poorer, it is unconscionable that the government is considering dropping this commitment.

That's the argument made by the Liberal Democrat peer and former MP Malcolm Bruce in an article for The Press and Journal today.

He says this policy is not charity: it is both a moral commitment and enlightened self-interest.

'Enlightened self-interest' is a concept I have been fond of since I first came across it in philosophy. 

Malcolm concludes:

The pandemic has convulsed the world. Yet the impact on poorer countries will be calamitous and it is not just about the pandemic and a plethora of health care challenges.

Many are struggling with debt, the impact of climate change and loss of livelihoods. All of this will require a massive international effort.

If the UK walks away now it will be to abandon our world leadership - our soft power pre-eminence and to display a mean-spirited country turning in on itself.

Cutting aid will not make disease, conflict and climate disasters go away. They will come back redoubled to our door.

Those new Liberal Democrat peers in full

According to Guido Fawkes:

• Sir Alan Beith – former MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed and former Chair of the Justice Select Committee

• Sharon Bowles – former MEP for South East England

• Sir Malcolm Bruce – former MP for Gordon, and former Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats

• Lorley Burt – former MP for Solihull and former Chair of the Liberal Democrats 

• Rt Hon Sir Menzies ‘Ming’ Campbell CH, CBE, QC – former MP for North East Fife and former Leader of the Liberal Democrats 

• Lynne Featherstone – former MP for Hornsey and Wood Green and held several ministerial positions 

• Don Foster – former MP for Bath and former Liberal Democrat Chief Whip 

• Jonny Oates – former Chief of Staff to the Deputy Prime Minister in the coalition government 

• Shas Sheehan – former Councillor for Kew and involved in several community groups 

• Sir Andrew Stunell – former MP for Hazel Grove and former Department for Communities and Local Government Minister 

• Dorothy Thornhill MBE – Mayor of Watford; former Councillor and Assistant Headteacher

The Sun names some of the 11 new Liberal Democrat peers

An 'exclusive' from SunNation this evening:

The Sun can reveal they will include at least two ex-MPs thrown out by voters at the general election three months ago, Lorely Burt and Lynn Featherstone. 

Three long-serving Lib Dem grandees who stood down as MPs in May – Sir Alan Beith, Sir Menzies Campbell, and Sir Malcolm Bruce – are also being enobled, alongside defeated ex-MEP Sharon Bowles and Mr Clegg’s former chief of staff Jonny Oates.

The report also says that Danny Alexander and Vince Cable will be knighted.

Later. The full list of Lib Dem peers is here.

Six of the Best 516

"Liberalism is a broad and messy philosophy, in which often there is no absolute right answer. A 'true liberal' appears to work on the premise that this isn’t the case. I’ve learned to deeply distrust 'true liberals'." James Graham observes the Liberal Democrat leadership election from outside the party.

Malcolm Bruce pays tribute to Charles Kennedy.

Building more houses brings prices down, right? Wrong, says Kate Allen, who has seen a pilot study by the London School of Economics that looks at eight developments of nearly 300 homes each, built in the Midlands and the South of England by the Barratt in the past five years.

Adrian Chen takes us inside Russia's troll factory, from which an army has tried to wreak havoc all across the internet.

York Mix presents memories of life at Rowntree's chocolate factory in the city.

"Imagine a parallel universe in which Are You Being Served? had starred Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Janet Suzman, and you might get some idea of what ITV’s Vicious is like." James Walton nails it.

The 1984 runners and riders - Liberator's finest hour

Mark Pack has reprinted this spread from the 1984 Liberal Assembly issue of Liberator.

It was probably the magazine's finest hour. Certainly, it was the only time we have provided the lead item for the BBC's six o'clock news.

The spread caused a huge row at the time but, as Mark points out, the pen portraits of the Liberal MPs (written by Ralph Bancroft, if I recall rightly) are remarkably kind - click on the picture and you should be able to read them.

Only one MP complained: Malcolm Bruce, who thought we had made him sound too worthy.

That BBC news item pictured David Steel and then "Liberal activists arriving in Bournemouth". Again if I recall rightly, that was Stewart Rayment and I walking along the seafront.

Why Lorely Burt lost the deputy leadership

Interviewed by the Huffington Post, Lorely Burt scoffs at the idea that she lost the Liberal Democrat deputy leadership election because her fellow MPs saw her as Nick Clegg's candidate.

But I wonder. As the Post explains, her defeat by Sir Malcolm Bruce was a bit of a mystery:

At the end of January Lib Dems chose veteran parliamentarian Sir Malcolm Bruce to replace Simon Hughes. The decision caught many observers off guard. The result was also not one Burt saw coming. 

"Yeah. I was surprised," she freely admits. ... "Malcolm came into the race quite late, so there was already an expectation that I was going to win even before he came in."

For a fuller version that the vote for Bruce was a vote against Clegg, see the article by Gareth Epps on Liberator's blog.

Can the rest of the United Kingdom afford Scottish independence?

Discussing John Barrett's views on Scottish independence earlier this month I wrote:

were I Scottish, if anything could convince me to vote for independence it would be being told that I could not afford it. I would be strongly tempted to vote Yes just to spite such a foolish argument.

Malcolm Bruce, the new deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, does not think it is a foolish argument. He puts an unusually forceful version of it in his interview with Caron Lindsay for Liberal Democrat Voice:

The rest of the UK is not going to indulge a Scotland that’s decided to leave and it’s not going to allow Scotland to go off on a financial frolic on its own, underwritten by the rest of the UK, without any conditions or constraints. So in some ways Scotland would be in a weaker position in terms of its economic management if it was independent than it is in the UK. 

If you have a Plan B, which they don’t, but you’re forced into it because you cannot get the deal you want, therefore you know your promises are undeliverable, you try to relaunch the groat where you’ve got no central bank with any track record, or anybody in it, the currency’s new and you’ve started your arrangement with a default. Then try and raise bonds on the stock market. Scotland would be bankrupt within weeks.

Malcolm may be right, then nationalism has always had more to do with emotion than it has with reason.

What is interesting is his claim that the rest of the UK will not allow Scotland to go its own way while underwriting its debts.

So far the Bank of England has said it will be happy to underwrite Scotland's debt, but this surely cannot be a permanent answer. This would be recipe for irresponsibility on the part of the new Scottish state and you cannot ask the people of the rest of the UK to underwrite policies over which they have no say.

So the question becomes, not can Scotland afford Scottish Independence, but can the rest of the United Kingdom afford Scottish independence?

Getting a Yes vote in the referendum may prove to be only the beginning of the SNP's problems. It could all get very unpleasant, and how can these questions be settled in the absence of amicable relations between the two governments?

Sir Malcolm Bruce to stand down at the next general election

From The Scotsman today:

Sir Malcolm Bruce, the Scottish Liberal Democrat president and one of Scotland’s longest serving MPs, is to stand down at the next General Election. 

Sir Malcolm, who has been the MP for Gordon since 1983, was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2012. 

He announced today that he would be standing down at the next election “to make way for some younger people.” 

Sir Malcolm said: “I have really done all the things I wanted to do and set out to do in Parliament. I have seen my Party come from being really a fringe party with, when I started, six MPs who had two per cent of the popular vote to a national party in Government. Now is the time to leave to make way for some younger people.”

Four Lib Dem MPs in top 14 of private members' bills ballot

Most of the publicity about today's private members bills' ballot has concerned James Wharton and his intention to promote the Conservative Party's Euro referendum bill.

But you may be interested to learn that four Liberal Democrat MPs came in the top 14 of the ballot:

9. Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine)
11. Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West)
13. Mark Williams (Ceredigion)
14. Sir Malcom Bruce (Gordon)

Even Sir Robert is probably just too low in the list to have a realistic chance of getting a bill all the way to the statute book, but who knows?

Yes it's Sir Malcolm Bruce

Congratulations to Malcolm Bruce, Lib Dem MP for Gordon, who is knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours.