Sefton Lib Dems put up a big tent

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Welcome to the Liberal Democrat and Progressive Alliance Group.

In Your Area reports an interesting development from Southport:

Sefton’s Liberal Democrat Group is opening its membership to progressive independent councillors as it aims to provide stronger opposition.

The group’s leader, Cllr John Pugh, says the decision is designed to enable more effective scrutiny of the Labour-run council as well as to welcome new people and ideas.

The Lib Dems are currently the largest opposition group on the council, ahead of the Conservatives and Independents, and Cllr Pugh says it would welcome any current or future councillor who shares a progressive agenda and similar values.

As a result of welcoming the new members ahead of the local elections on May 6, the group is to be renamed the Liberal Democrat and Progressive Alliance Group.

It goes on to quote John Pugh, who was Lib Dem MP for Southport between 2001 and 2017, as saying:

“Working together outside the party political bubble may be a risky step but it is certainly worth making the attempt and we are prepared to make it.“

When John Pugh quoted Evelyn Waugh in the Commons

Yesterday I posted my answers to a short questionnaire about some of my favourite and least favourite reading. 

One of the books I mentioned was Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall, and today I found this comment on that post:

Waugh's "Decline and Fall" is a good choice. I once used it in the Commons debate on the Academies Bill to general mystification as no-one who would have read it could have missed the irony of that particular proposal. Philistines !

"The Bill suggests that simply calling schools academies without the dosh will work some special magic. I am personally intrigued by this relabelling exercise.

There may be a day when simply calling an institution a "school" might be some sort of insult or an indication of failure. I do not know whether other hon. Members have read Evelyn Waugh's "Decline and Fall" but in it the hapless Paul Pennyfeather seeks a teaching job through an agency having been expelled from Oxford. He is told by the man at the agency:

"We class schools...into...Leading School, First-rate School, Good School and School. Frankly...School is pretty bad".

Interestingly enough, Waugh's unfortunate character Paul Pennyfeather was expelled from Oxford for indecency, having been de-bagged by drunken members of what Waugh calls the Bollinger Club. There is a slight resonance in that.

The comment was anonymous but a search of Hansard revealed that my hunch was correct: the writer was the former Liberal Democrat MP for Southport, John Pugh.

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British journalism failed in its coverage of the general election, argues Brian Cathcart.

John Pugh explains why the Liberal Democrats lost Southport: "We lost in Southport not because we’d forgotten how to campaign or even because of the genius of our opponents but because the party did not have a clear enough national message that connected emotionally and personally with the local electorate and in a quasi- presidential election in 2017 that mattered."

"One glimmer of hope is that the DUP, for all its sectarian history and obscurantist beliefs, is pragmatic about economic policy. It will kill off the idea of the idea of the UK leaving the EU customs union which is fundamental to the economy of the island of Ireland." Vince Cable on politics after the election.

Oliver Wainwright looks at the failure of Richard Rogers' new gateway to Cambridge.

"A borstal was an obvious recruiting ground for the army because they were only permitted to detain healthy boys who could withstand the tough regime of drill-instruction, training and education, all of which began before dawn." Conor Reidy on the Irish Borstal boys who chose to go to the First World War.

Alex White meets some fox cubs.

One of the Liberal Democrat MPs who abstained on Article 50 lost his seat on Thursday

I have seen it suggested that the Liberal Democrats' position on Europe was toned down during the general election because some of our remaining MPs were concerned it would alienate their voters.

In view of that, I was interested to discover a post I wrote back in December. There I quoted the words of the three Lib Dem MPs who abstained on Article 50.

I see that, sadly, one of those MPs - Greg Mulholland - lost his seat on Thursday.

The others were John Pugh, who did not stand this time, and Norman Lamb.

Michael Gove's appointment as environment secretary this evening rather bears out what I wrote in that post:

If the farmers of North Norfolk think they will do better out of a Tory government than they have out of the European Union, they must have been sniffing the silage.

Later. I originally suggested that John Pugh had been defeated on Thursday, but of course he did not stand this time. Which makes this post rather less impressive than when it first appeared.

Lib Dems choose candidate to follow John Pugh in Southport

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Sue McGuire, the leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Sefton Council, has been selected by the party to fight for Southport, reports the Southport Visiter.

The seat is currently held for the Lib Dems by John Pugh.

While we wonder why the paper has that odd name, let's enjoy this old railway poster.

John Pugh talks sense on term-time absence

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Following today's Supreme Court judgement, the Liberal Democrats issued a press release quoting John Pugh, our shadow education secretary:

“Today’s judgment was disappointing but the ball is back in the government's court, they could act and change the law and bring back sensible rules with proper safeguards in place. Nearly 20,000 people have been prosecuted and caught in a dragnet by these laws in the last year. 

“Many employees have no choice when to take their holidays. People in some areas have to work all through the summer at the height of the tourism season. 

“Others simply cannot afford to go on holiday at peak times, when the cost of holidays goes through the roof. So, it's vitally important to offer more flexibility to schools and headteachers to help families who need to take a break together. 

“We believe that headteachers should be allowed to grant up to 10 days of term-time absence in special circumstances".

That sounds about right to me.

This enthusiasm for giving councils the power to fine parents began with New Labour, whose least appealing aspect was its authoritarianism. It was often hard to say where its education policies ended and its policing policies began.

And some time before that, policymakers gave up on the idea that they could take action to make the economy work more efficiently.

Instead, education has emerged as the arena where ambitious young wonks feel they can intervene with confidence.

They know what is right for children and for the country, but they are not so sure about parents and headteachers.

Three out of nine Liberal Democrat MPs abstained on Article 50

Unsurprisingly, the Liberal Democrats have confirmed that the party’s MPs will vote against any motion which backs the unconditional invocation of Article 50
Liberal Democrat Voice announced on Wednesday.

In the event, things turned out to be more complicated than that. Only six of the nine Lib Dem MPs voted against the government motion. Three - Norman Lamb, Greg Mulholland and John Pugh - abstained.

A useful Independent article has them giving their reasons.

There's Norman Lamb:

“I don’t feel comfortable with having voted for the referendum in the first place - as we all did - and to then vote to block the triggering of the Article. 

“I think it would be inconsistent therefore for me to oppose tonight.” 

Mr Lamb also hinted at the difficulties of representing a Leave-voting constituency, adding: “I have the farming community talking to me about this.”

Greg Mulholland:

“I am not prepared to give the impression that I do not accept the result of the referendum, or that I am seeking to block it. 

“The motion clearly stated that that the result of the referendum must be respected, so voting against it could be taken as not doing so.” 

He added: “What is actually important are not meaningless gesture politics and party political games, it is working to ensure that Britain has the closest, strongest relationship we can with EU countries.”

and John Pugh:

Mr Pugh said the Lib Dems must not give people the impression “we are sore losers” or that the party wanted to “stop the negotiation process itself from happening”.

He added: “That is why we must be careful about putting any and every obstacle in the way of exploring the options.

“Even leavers will eventually realise they cannot have their cake and eat it - but trying to snatch their cake off them just now might not be the best way to persuade them.”

It seems that not all our MPs have yet signed up to the idea that we should aim to become the party of the 48 per cent.

I don't want to be too harsh here, though if the farmers of North Norfolk think they will do better out of a Tory government than they have out of the European Union, they must have been sniffing the silage.

So let me just make two points.

First, that I am more convinced I was right when, rather to my surprise, I voted for Tim Farron in the leadership election.

Second, Lord Bonkers was on to something when he wrote in his foreword to this year's  Liberator songbook:

With our clear stance on Europe – exemplified by that splendid new group ‘I’m As Much In Favour Of The EU As The Next Man But Did You See The Referendum Result In My Constituency?’ – I have no doubt that we shall return to government before we grow much older.

John Pugh defends the study of philosophy

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There has been some grumbling of Twitter about the appointment of John Pugh as the Liberal Democrats' education spokesperson on education.

I too hope that he will not take us back to the days when our education policy consisted solely of Phil Willis complaining that every new initiative would lead to a "two-tier service".

This is because, then as now, we already have a two-tier system: between the state and private sectors - and frequently within the state system too, policed by house prices. The question is what we do about this, not how we can defend the status quo.

But, being a philosophy graduate myself, I was encouraged to find a 2009 article by John, written at a time when Liverpool University was proposing the closure of its philosophy and politics departments.

He wrote:

As philosophers would say, studying has both intrinsic and instrumental value, and this is true of all intellectual academic disciplines. Yet this is increasingly being forgotten. 

The past 10-20 years have seen the rise of philistinism and technocratic short-sightedness. The forces controlling education have increasingly forgotten that intellectual learning is valuable and important for its own sake, and not simply to the extent it boosts economic productivity. Ironically, those forces have simultaneously failed to see that the intellectual skills acquired from academic study are amongst the very best methods of equipping people with the capacity to be productive.

John Pugh: Lib Dems risk repeating the errors of the 1920s

Writing on Liberal Democrat Voice, John Pugh (Lib Dem MP for Southport) draws an important historical parallel:

Optimists point out that we could still hold up to 37 seats in the General Election if we just dig in properly,but we thereby effectively concede the overwhelming majority of the country to our political rivals and that is not a strategy for the future. 

We risk repeating the errors of the 1920s when a diminishing band of Coalition Liberal MPs intent and  on their own survival tried to cling on, while the party in the country withered. Only when Grimond decades later urged the party to get out of the trenches and walk towards the sound of gunfire did the party revive.

Being serious about power cannot mean merely clinging on to three dozen seats (mainly in the South of England) and praying they give us the balance of power.

It must also mean wanting to wield power in the European Parliament, in Edinburgh and Cardiff and in the great cities of the North and Midlands.

GUEST POST We are all the poorer for sound-bite politics

Tony Robertson, a Liberal Democrat councillor from Sefton, says we are all poorly served by the current low standard of political debate.

I often wonder how many politicians of genuine independent thinking may be left as year on year their all-controlling political masters churn out and then demand that silly sound bites are used during every media interview or are placed within every press release.

‘The squeezed middle’ comes to mind as a present favourite but there others which are just as meaningless. Ed Miliband, poor chap, seems to be fed a diet of them and looks so wooden as he tries to sneak them into every interview. But he is far from being alone as senior Tories do it just as hamfistedly. Sadly, I fear it is taking root in senior Lib Dems too.

Of course it is not a new stunt ‘the Pound in your pocket’ comes to mind and ‘never had it so good’ as well but what worries me is that such pointless/meaningless phrases, which easily slip off the tongue, are now just everyday language to our political leaders.

An MP who comes to mind who you would have to try hard to get to do sound bites is John Pugh of Southport, his independence of mind and thought is not easily contained or compromised. But I digress; the issue here is that politicians use sound bites to duck issues, to mud sling and to avoid answering questions.

Why though do the media let them get away with it? Surely, a blatant sound biting stunt from a senior politician would benefit from a firm rebuff along the lines of ‘yes that childlike sound bite is all very well but it does you no credit as a supposedly serious senior politician’! Imagine the howls of indignation and protest, but so long as such media put-downs were fairly handed out across the political spectrum (which of course they would not be) would it not make the sound bite politicians far more wary about trying to take us all for soft Joe’s and Jane’s?

Sadly, many in the media often serve us just as poorly as our political leaders, because of their own political/proprietor bias and unwillingness to take on those in power. As a free thinking Liberal one can despair at the poor quality of public debate either as it comes from politicians or as it is reported by the media. We are indeed poorly served.

Tony Robertson blogs at Sefton Focus.

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John Pugh introduces "Grim Up North?" - a call for a rebalancing of the British economy by a group of Liberal Democrat MPs from the North of England - for Liberal Democrat Voice.

"Putin’s great fear is that the people of a future better Ukraine might inspire an entirely different unification with their East Slav brethren on his side of the border – a common cause of popular revolt against him and other leaders like him." James Meek reports from Ukraine for the London Review of Books.

Iain Dale pays his tribute to Marion Thorpe.

"Reaching the conclusion that you are part of a minority that’s smarter than everyone else does rather incline one to authoritarian or undemocratic politics." Matter of Facts reveals the nasty side of nerds.

It is, incredibly, 20 years since Morrissey's 'Vauxhall and I' was released. The Mouth Magazine marks the anniversary.

Jones the Planner visits the Thames estuary: "It is difficult to leave Thamesmead without a sense of disappointment. Clearly, the visionary concept was flawed but it honestly expressed social purpose and optimism for the future. Most of what we see today suggests tawdry short termism and self serving hype."

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"Cameron started his premiership by placing great emphasis upon adherence to the Ministerial Code as a mechanism to deliver higher standards of behaviour in Government. His refusal to refer the Hunt case to Alex Allan to investigate whether the Code has been breached looks hypocritical." Alex's Archives ponders the latest development in the case of Jeremy Hunt.

John Pugh, Lib Dem MP for Southport, calls for Vince Cable to be made Chancellor on PoliticsHome.

Fleet Street Fox writes on the inexorable rise in the cost of the Olympics: "None of this was mentioned in 2005. Then it was all property prices, David Beckham in a suit and 10-year-old children saying they wanted to win a gold medal."

It's worse than that. On Ceasefire Ashok Kumar reveals a consistent pattern of the Games being used to restructure the host city to the exclusion of its working class and ethnic minority residents.

Go Litel Blog, Go... samples the gentler sporting fare of county cricket at Trent Bridge. But there is always Steve Kirby: "In his maturity, his act is now more like a wrestler in the Mick McManus mould, prowling the boundary and engaging in pantomime banter with the crowd. He did shape up to throw the ball at the batsman a couple of times, but you know he isn’t actually going to do it these days."

In other news, Andrew Millard proves that you are almost certainly descended from Edward III.

Liberal Democrats need a health policy of their own

The Liberal Democrat Conference has voted by a narrow majority not to mandate our peers to vote for the Health & Social Care Bill as it currently stands.

But does the Lib Dem Conference mandate the party's elected and unelected representatives how to vote on individual pieces of legislation while the are passing through Westminster anyway? It makes party policy, of course, but that is rather a different thing.

So I found it hard to be as moved by events in Gateshead earlier today as the people who were there - and are still shouting about it on Twitter as I write. (Shirley Williams has gone from heroine to dupe within the last 24 hours, for those who are not following it.)

My own view on the Health and Social Care Bill remains that the Conservatives were foolish to bring in a flagship bill on health in the first place. I have blogged about this before.

But I share the mystification of David Boyle that so many Liberal Democrats attach such importance to maintaining untouched the bureaucratic NHS structure bequeathed to us by Labour. Much of what the bill proposes, such as giving GPs an enhanced role in commissioning, seems to me thoroughly sensible - even if it could have been done without the bill.

So I am puzzled by the assertion of the normally sensible Mark Thompson that the Lib Dems "will reap an electoral whirlwind" if the support the bill. I can seen that Labour will blame any future problems in the NHS on the bill, whether it has anything to do with them or not, but nowhere does Mark tell us why he thinks the outcome of the bill will be so dreadful in the eyes of voters.

My own chief concern with the bill was the original draft's removal of the secretary of state's obligation to provide a service. This is all the more important if you introduce more competition and local control into the NHS, because there has to be someone for people to appeal to if things are not working. But I am assured that this - or something that will mean the same if it comes to court - has been restored to the bill in the Lords.

David Boyle also puts his finger on what has been wrong with the Liberal Democrat to health and the NHS for so long:

For ten years, we failed to work out what a Liberal NHS might look like for the century ahead. When the new legislation was being drafted by the coalition, there was a vacuum where major Liberal thinking ought to have been. 

All we could do was to look back fondly to the way we imagined things to be a generation ago, and we clung to it manfully. All we could say about the NHS was – apart from the usual principles – what we didn’t want.

As one way forward, I would suggest we take seriously the proposal for "democratically controlled and clinically led" health boards that John Pugh makes in his new report A Way Through: NHS Reform without strife and upheaval.

John Pugh on the future of the NHS

John Pugh, Lib Dem MP for Southport and co-chair of the party's backbench health and social care committee, has written a paper on the future of the NHS.

As his own website reports, John Pugh

proposes that the cluster groups of Primary Care Trusts that now temporarily run the local NHS could be the foundation for democratically controlled and clinically led Health Boards similar to those found in Northern Ireland. Such boards would control health and social care avoiding the expensive and disjointed shunting of elderly patients between the NHS and Social Services.

The MP states that he has received a very positive response to his proposals from clinical leaders and says: "It is important that we map out a new direction for the NHS that does not repeat the tired old prescription of more competition and the futile effort to treat the country's health service like a market.

You can download the whole paper from the link above.

It is good to see some Lib Dem thinking on health that goes beyond calls to "Save the NHS", "Kill the Bill" and defend the status quo.

Coupled with the report on the future of policing that Tom Brake published the other day, it suggests that intellectual life is stirring on the party's backbenches.

John Pugh, public debt and the nature of the state

At the start of the month I asked why political radicalism has become synonymous with a desire to see a permanent and massive public debt. Stumbling and Mumbling went further, pointing out that there are several reasons why the left should be suspicious of a large public debt.*

So I was pleased to see John Pugh, the Liberal Democrat MP for Southport, writing an article for Liberal Democrat Voice in which he argues that "Liberal Democrats can act to reduce the deficit and be positive about the role of the democratic state".

That is quite right and I am pleased to see John saying it. However, I am less happy about something else he says:

The trouble starts when those on the right start to regard the democratic state itself as some sort of alien monster that has sprung into existence on its own, independently of its citizens. Then ‘rolling back the state’ is identified as freeing and empowering citizens – as though we can always achieve the same individually as we can collectively.
It is precisely because of poor accountability – a distorted voting system, limited devolution and huge swathes of public services run by quangos – that people disassociate their aspirations from those of their state.

I do not regard that state as an "alien monster" and our Liberal Democrat concern with democratic reform - the thing that unites all shades of opinion within the party - suggests that we all accept that it is not about to wither away.
However, even in some future Lib Dem utopia with PR and proper local control of public services, I would be wary of talking about the state having aspirations. People have aspirations - often widely differing aspirations - and it is the role of the modern state to allow them to live in harmony while seeking to fulfill those aspirations.
To attribute aspirations to the state or to argue that it can meet all human ambitions strikes me a sort of Hegelian state worship. Rather than encourage reform, it tends to mystify the nature of government, which is a tendency that will appeal to traditional Conservatives but should not appeal to us.
The debate on the state that Liberal Democrats should be having is that outlined by Ronald Dworkin:

The practical problem is this: there are certain things we all want government to do. We want government, for instance, to select methods of education, to sponsor culture, and to do much else that looks, on the surface, like endorsing one set of personal values against another and therefore contradicting liberalism.
It is very important for liberals to develop a theory that would make a distinction here between enriching the choices available to people and enforcing a choice upon people.
The crucial idea, it seems to me, is the idea of imagination. The liberal is concerned to expand imagination without imposing any particular choice upon imagination.
But I've simply named a problem. I haven't met it. It does seem to me that liberalism is rather weak at this point and needs a theory of education and a theory of culture-support that it does not have.

* It was William Cobbett who pointed out that we have the Crown Jewels but a National Debt.