Labour need to start winning their by-elections too

By James Belchamber | Fri Dec 17 2021

It is hard to underestimate the scale of the Liberal Democrats North Shropshire win last night. Turning a Conservative majority of almost 23,000 votes into a Lib Dem majority of 6,000 is no easy feat - and it has sent shock waves through the political world.

John Curtice called the win an 8.5 on the political Richter scale - a devastating earthquake. Even the BBC - who have been so very cautious in their news reporting of late - are now asking questions like "Has Boris Johnson lost his winning touch?".

Labour's equivalent by-election, in Old Bexley and Sidcup, is also a Tory stronghold - and one the Lib Dems largely "sat out", with a humiliating drop to only 3% of the vote - behind even the Green Party (though they did campaign). Labour has an extensive activist base in London, with control over 21 councils and 45 MPs to call on (vs 27 Lib Dem councils in England, and 12 - sorry, 13 - MPs total). Despite this, Labour could not muster the electoral force to even reduce the Conservative majority to a plurality, let alone risk an upset - Louie French was returned to the commons with 52% of the vote.

So, the question has to be asked - why aren't Labour winning by-elections?

Join the justLiberals Discord!

By James Belchamber | Wed Sep 01 2021

Over the last year we've been running justLiberals, there has been a Discord keeping us going. Now we've decided to throw it open while we re-work the website to include a link to it.

Come join us.

There is no such thing as ethical capitalism

By James Belchamber | Mon Jun 21 2021

Knives are an inseparable part of everyday life. We use them when cooking, we use them at work. Every day, millions use their nearest knife to open boxes, packages and letters. Just have a think about how many knives are in your house right now.

We also know that knives can be used for great evil; something communities have struggled with for.. well, forever. The solution? Regulation.

Regulation of knives is mostly uncontroversial - as a society, we mostly accept that a chef can carry very sharp and dangerous knives between home and work, but we expect them to travel directly between those places (and we enforce that expectation). Knives for general carry are limited in length and in the way they lock - outside of this, you need a specific reason. Some bemoan this, but generally it's agreed that the liberty of.. well, living - outweighs the infringement on liberty of needing a reason to carry about a dangerous weapon.

The message is clear - knives are a tool, they can cause a lot of harm, and we do not rely on owners of knives to be benevolent and ethical in their ownership, storage and operation of knives. We regulate knives, and the owners of knives, in the pursuit of better outcomes - not banning them, but very clearly setting out rules based on avoiding harm and promoting freedom.

But with capitalism - and, more generally, free markets and commercial enterprise - some have bought into the myth that there is an "ethical" variant we can nurture and trust.

Ownership for all

By William Francis | Mon Jun 14 2021

One of the most glaring contradictions of British politics is the increasing attention paid to economic inequality by academics and the public, whilst decisions made by the central government do little to address this problem and actively make it worse. I suspect this has to do with wealth inequality being framed as an abstraction; something to be vaguely 'tackled' rather than a clear narrative about how policy should improve the lived experiences of ordinary people. A positive Liberal case for mass ownership could be the remedy to this problem.

Liberals have long seen property as fundamental for creating liberty. For the Liberal MP Hilaire Belloc, this chiefly meant promoting ownership of small landholdings and stakes in co-operative enterprises. This was a cornerstone of Distributism, a proposed alternative to what Belloc saw as the collectivist ideologies of socialism and capitalism. That ideology was highly influential among the Unservile State group, who saw property as a form of economic security independent of employment or state welfare, with the Liberal Parliamentary candidate Ramsay Muir, arguing that 'liberty will be strengthened by the almost universal possession of "a bit of property" '.

A Liberal education must be centred around the individual

By James Belchamber | Mon May 31 2021

In a previous article I was scathing about this government's approach to education - a regressive insistence on churning out compliant automatons while employers demand creative, self-directed and specialised workers. But in their approach is a logic - that learners all need to be calibrated to a common criteria. This plays out in a national curriculum - literally, everyone learning the same things at the same point in their lives - and comes with the values (uncritical obedience and an unwavering respect for authority) that are required of any system that tries to achieve this.

I no longer believe that should be our goal.

It would not surprise you to know that, as a Liberal, I believe everything starts with - and comes back to - individuals. But education should not just be focused on the individual based on an abstract idea - we need to ground it in the practicalities and intent of education.

So let me convince you of an alternative goal: a much expanded "national curriculum", that every learner progresses through at their own pace and in their own order - and that no one person should ever come close to completing.

We need Climate Freedom, NOW

By Rob Davidson | Mon May 17 2021

As a child of the 80's, the environment was constantly on my mind. We had the hole in the Ozone Layer, letting in the sun's rays and giving people cancer. As a Cub Scout, I helped manually crush drinks cans for the apparently new concept of recycling. There was the growing Greenhouse Effect, of course, and in fevered dreams I imagined a mushroom cloud bloom over Chernobyl. Between the Cold War and Climate Change, youthful thoughts about the future were sometimes bleak to say the least.

For the youth of today, things are far worse. Ignore for a moment the looming Cold War with China, Russia and a new wave of 'illiberal democracies' and take a look at the environment. What we once called Global Warming and then called Climate Change is now the Climate Emergency.

School children and other young people are showing signs of 'climate anxiety'. Mental health is suffering because of this crisis. There is some evidence that climate scientists are suffering from 'despair' and feelings of 'hopelessness' and that, surely, cannot be a good sign.