A Lib Dem reshuffle is coming after this conference

Photo by Amanda Jones on Unsplash 

Senior party figures have told PoliticsHome that the Liberal Democrats will reshuffle their frontbench after their party conference in Bournemouth this weekend.

Among the names tipped for promotion in Harriet Symonds' article are Alex Brewer, Jess Brown-Fuller, Josh Reynolds, Anna Sabine, Mike Martin and Bobby Dean.

Given the calibre of the new Lib Dem MPs elected last year, this sounds like a positive move.

But don't get too excited:

Continuity will prevail in some key areas: deputy leader Daisy Cooper is expected to remain in the Treasury brief, as are Callum Miller in Foreign Affairs – seen as a "safe pair of hands" –and chief whip Wendy Chamberlain.

Listen to Mike Martin on the Strategic Defence Review

Talk about an eyeopener...

Mike Martin, the Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells, is Arthur Snell's latest guest on his Behind the Lines podcast. And he paints an alarming picture of Britain's armed forces.

You would hope that the Conservatives would at least care about the defence of the realm, but it turns out they left defence in as big a mess as every other area of government.

The Navy, for instance, has aircraft carriers, but no planes to launch from them, and at any one time can have only five ships at sea.

If the RAF had to fight tonight, it could muster 30 planes, and none of our airfields as any air defence.

And the Army is shrinking. It currently has only 12 artillery pieces.

Mike is very good on the way the top brass always thinks that new technology will replace the need for boots on the ground - in the 1920s it was biplanes - but it never does.

The Joy of Six 1354

"As much as I wish it weren’t true, there is a fundamental difference that Starmer can’t "bridge", no matter how noble his aims. It is this: the Europeans (including the UK) see Ukrainian security as European security. They are the same. The US (under the current leadership) views Ukraine as a transaction in which they favour the Russians over the Ukrainians." Lib Dem MP Mike Martin says its time for Keir Starmer to face the new reality and lead Europe into becoming a military power.

Samantha Hancox-Li argues that "The constitutional settlement that once governed the United States has broken down. The world that we knew is gone. The second Trump Administration is working their hardest to forge a new settlement: an ugly settlement, based on personal authoritarian power and MAGA culture war."

"Hall’s film lays out the systemic failures of the police and all the other authorities supposedly in charge of protecting these girls and thousands like them, not just then, but now and all the terrible years in between. It is a tale of blind eyes turned, abundant evidence ignored, reports buried and task forces disbanded." Lucy Mangan reviews Groomed: A National Scandal.

Lisa Hagen and Karen Guzzo discuss the US pronatalist movement with Tonya Mosley from National Public Radio.

"Towards the end of 1964, she also made her biggest political statement. She was booked to tour South Africa, but insisted she would not play to segregated audiences, and was eventually deported from the country part way through the tour, with her music being banned there as a result." Andrew Hickey on Dusty Springfield and Son of a Preacher Man.

Martin Waller discusses three early utopian novels - socialist, feminist, ecological - that offered radical alternatives to conventional society before dystopias claimed the spotlight.

Eight Liberal Democrat MPs have been barred from Russia

The Putin regime has banned 15 British MPs from entering Russia, accusing them of making "hostile statements and unfounded accusations". And eight of those 15 are Liberal Democrats.

Our congratulations go to: Alistair Carmichael, Chris Coghlan, Will Forster, James MacCleary, Helen Maguire, Mike Martin, Manuella Perteghella and Cameron Thomas.

Helen Maguire, the party's defence spokesperson, told Politics Home:

"I will wear this retaliatory sanction as a badge of honour - as will my Liberal Democrat colleagues also placed on Moscow’s blacklist."

Six peers have also been sanctioned by Moscow, among them the Lib Dems Jeremy Purvis and Julie Smith.

Mike Martin: David Cameron suspended collective responsibility for the EU referendum - and the Tories haven't been responsible since

Introduced as "one of the most interesting new politicians in Britain", Mike Martin is the guest on the latest edition of Nick Cohen's podcast The Lowdown.

They talk of the international situation, the need to increase the size of the British Army and the strange death of the Conservative Party.

As Mike observes, David Cameron suspended cabinet collective responsibility for the 2016 EU referendum, and the Tories never regained a sense of responsibility after it. 

They spent a decade fighting a civil war rather than governing the country. Hence  many of the problems we now face, including the underfunded condition of Britain's Armed Forces.

Cohen suggests that the media missed the biggest story of the 2024 general election - the gains the Liberal Democrats made in what used to be the heart of Tory England.

Mike Martin's Tunbridge Wells seat is perhaps the most startling example of this, and he says it's easy to imagine the Tories finishing third there in May's local elections, behind the Lib Dems and Reform.

Mike Martin: More likely than not, we'll be involved in a war by 2030

If you thought yesterday's quotation from Charles Masterman on July 2014 was bad, you won't want to read Mike Martin in The Big Issue.

Here's the opening of the magazine's interview with the Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells:

"I’ve been sitting in private committee briefings with senior officials, and they say there’s a good chance we’ll be in a war before the next election. I think that’s right, that’s my view,” Mike Martin, the Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells, elected to parliament in the 2024 election, tells me. “There’s certainly more than a 50 per cent chance we’ll be involved in a war before 2030."

Great. This is the prediction of a politician with more than a passing interest in military matters. Martin is a former British Army officer who served multiple tours of Afghanistan, picked up a PhD in war studies and has authored books including 2023's How to Fight a War.

It’ll all be professional soldiers and drones though, you might think. A modern war for modern times. "Obviously if we got into a big war, we’d have conscription straight away," says Martin. The Ukraine war has shown how, despite all the high-tech advances, modern wars still involve soldiers digging trenches like they did in the First World War. 

“Would we need to conscript? Yeah, we would. Because ultimately, we’re not at a stage yet where you can replace people with drones,” says Martin. “We’re a long way off from that. Drones are fine, as far as they go, but you still need people to occupy villages, hold ground, and all the rest of it. And that’s not going to change for quite some time.”

The great danger, as I see it, is that British troops form part of an inadequate peacekeeping force in Ukraine, while Russia misses no opportunity to draw that force into skirmishes. Meanwhile, the US sits on the sidelines and Trump makes interventions that are sympathetic to Russia.

Trouble is, at present that seems to be the sort of peacekeeping force most likely to emerge.

Listen to Mike Martin on the new world disorder

Mike Martin, military expert, writer, former soldier and Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells, is the guest on the latest edition of Arthur Snell's Behind the Lines podcast.

He talks about the international order under a second Trump Presidency, and also about the frantic weeks that all newly elected MPs face.

Mike Martin, Lib Dem PPC for Tunbridge Wells, on what victory looks like for Ukraine and how it can be achieved

The guest on Nick Cohen's latest The Lowdown podcast is Dr Mike Martin, ex-soldier, military strategist, author - and Liberal Democrat PPC for Tunbridge Wells:

Mike, a senior visiting research fellow in the Department of War Studies at King's College , London, explain to Nick how the West initially miscalculated Ukraine's chances against a belligerent Russia by looking at the spreadsheet showing the relative military strengths of each country in terms of material and troop numbers. Western leaders failed to take into account other elements such as strategy, quality of leadership and that crucial of all military essences, the will to fight.

Ukraine's initial tactical priority is the eviction of Russia's forces from along the shore of the Black Sea and in particular Crimea, the loss of which should prove one defeat too many for Vladamir Putin's chances of survival.

But is strategic victory for Ukraine possible before the 2024 US Presidential election and can Europe step up to the plate in the likelihood of a second Trump victory?

Listen to the podcast.

The previous edition of The Lowdown, where the guest is the novelist and historian James Hawes, is a good listen too.

Nick Cohen visits Mike Martin in Tunbridge Wells and sniffs a political earthquake

Nick Cohen takes us to Tunbridge Wells in his latest substack Writing from London:

Mike Martin is the sort of chap who used to be a natural Tory.  He served in Afghanistan, where the army put his knowledge of Pashto to good use, and is a visiting fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. ...

His grandmother was a Conservative constituency chairman. His parents met at a dance at the Richmond-on-Thames Conservative Association, and his father went on to be a Conservative candidate in the 1983 general election.

Unsurprisingly, Martin has taken up the family tradition of going into politics. This hard-headed realist, however, is fighting to remove the Conservatives from power.

He will be the Liberal Democrat candidate for the Royal Town of Tunbridge Wells at the next election.

But does he stand any chance at the next election?

Cohen clearly thinks he does, citing the flight of the liberal middle classes from London and its property prices that is turning the town of Tunbridge Wells 'progressive'.

And if the Tories think the surrounding villages will save them, they may be disappointed:

Martin canvasses them as well. He walks up the long drives of country homes worth between £1 and £2 million, and thinks “I’ve no chance here”.

Only when he notices that the cars parked by the double garages are electric, does he think again.

Their owners cite climate change as the issue that worries them most. “It has really surprised me how much it has come up,” Martin told me.

The Tories, Martin says, can't tackle the climate crisis "because they are trapped by their libertarian fringe".

That's true and, more generally, being Tory MP, even a Tory minister, is today more about striking absurd 'anti-elitist' attitudes than it is about solving the problems voters face in their everyday lives.

Meanwhile, opinion polling suggests that Conservative voters are embracing the environmentalist agenda more and more warmly.

And why shouldn't they? Good stewardship used to be at the heart of Conservative thinking.

Cohen quotes Mike Martin's own grandmother as asking, when he renounced his family's commitment to the Tory party, what will happen to the Conservatives if they carry on losing educated and public-spirited young people like her grandson.

And he concludes:

In Tunbridge Wells, and in many other formerly safe seats, the Tories will soon find out. I doubt the verdict will please them.