The road to power starts with a single step

I have, mostly by dint of being too polite to say no, risen a surprisingly long way in the genteel world of Town and Parish Councils. I represent my county on the National Assembly of the National Association of Local Councils (NALC), and chair a national committee and a national network.

And now, my various terms of office are at an end and I find myself rather wanting to be re-elected. To that end, I attended a meeting of the Mid Suffolk Area Forum of the Suffolk Association of Local Councils (SALC) this evening where the first order of business was the (re)election of the Chair, i.e. me, and three Vice-Chairs.

We had rather more attendees than usual, as the other item on the agenda was a presentation from each of the competing proposals for local government reform in Suffolk - we’re being “unitaried” by Labour in the current round, and the prospect of a contest made me slightly nervous. After all, my representative “house of cards” is built on being either Chair or Vice-Chair of the branch.

Luckily, however, the withdrawal of one of my rivals meant that I was re-elected by a simple show of hands (or, perhaps, inertia), which means that I’ll be at the SALC Board on Monday, where I hope to be re-appointed for another year as Suffolk’s representative on the NALC National Assembly.

It’s a hectic week or so for me, as I’m due to chair a meeting of NALC’s Micro Councils Network on Friday and, subject to a vote on Monday, attend a National Assembly meeting on Tuesday.

So, wish me luck and we’ll meet again on the other side…

The field for President and Vice-President is set - some more thoughts…

So, with nominations closed, Babarinde vs Bray and Collins vs Hussain are the two contests at the top of the “bill”. Time, so think, to start the process of deciding how I might vote…

I’ve already given some thought to the choice for President, a contest made infinitely more edifying by the absence of Natalie Bird who, despite making protestations of having a campaign, never seemed to get beyond insisting that Liberal Democrat Voice publish her thoughts. Perhaps her failure to obtain the required two hundred nominations suggests that her particular viewpoint is not a widely shared one…

But now that it’s Josh against Prue, I can be confident that we might have an offer of two different philosophical and practical approaches to the role. And whilst I suspect that the average member, as opposed to those who are far more familiar with the inner workings of the Party, will vote for the MP over the long-term committee hand (and yes, there’s far more to Prue than that), I still want to be reassured that there is a candidate who will fulfil what I see as the basic requirements of the role.

Firstly, will an incoming President be willing to tell uncomfortable truths to the Leader if required? Given that I know Prue far better than I know Josh, I have firsthand evidence that Prue will at least try. Josh may have competing pressures upon him, although that is entirely conjecture.

That brings me to an interesting aspect of both contests, i.e. how little personal experience I have of the other three candidates. That isn’t a criticism of them, far from it, but perhaps a reminder that, as someone who has been increasingly semi-detached from the day to day work of the Party of late, I don’t really follow what our MPs are up too - my attention is more focussed on events at the other end of the Palace of Westminster, for perhaps obvious reasons.

Secondly, how does each see their role as Chair of the Federal Board, a body with perhaps more power than its predecessors? And in terms of steering the Federal Party in its dealings with the States and the various key committees?

As someone who has served in a variety of administrative roles on myriad Party committees, you wouldn’t be surprised to find that I have some pretty strong views on that, although not necessarily those oòyou might predict of a self-confessed faceless bureaucrat.

So, in that sense, Josh and Victoria, as well as Kamran, are more of a blank canvass for me to fill in.

The campaigns have caught my eye, mostly for the “shock and awe” tactics that Josh employed, but also the stream of endorsements that have reached me via social media, and I do look at the endorsements to see what those I trust are thinking.

But I haven’t made my mind up yet. Whoever wins the Presidency can only ever be the second-best holder of the post - my bias on that point is well and truly on my sleeve - but I do want whoever wins to succeed.

Turning to the Vice-Presidency, something that I’ve never had to do before, I guess that as a minority member of the Party, of part-Indian origin, I should take particular interest in the role. But, as most people would never guess that I am, I don’t experience the same issues that visible minorities do. At least, I don’t think that I do, even if my surname does occasionally create expectations that I don’t meet.

At some point, I’m going to have to find the time to read the campaign material, see what it says to me and to those roles that I have in the Party, and whether it makes sense. As a Returning Officer, I’m on a less “glamorous” part of the frontline in the fight for a more representative Party, and I want to see that our leaders understand what levers might be pulled in terms of candidate recruitment, approval and selection.

As I say, I’m going to have to read their material before making a decision…

ID cards: so remind me, what did you vote Labour for, exactly?

Mandatory ID cards are the latest idea to come out of the Labour brains trust, something so vital that it wasn’t actually in the manifesto they published just over a year ago. It does seem that the Starmer administration now resembles a rabbit caught in the Reform UK headlights or, perhaps worse, a pointer towards another ultimately authoritarian Labour government.

I have little in the way of fundamental problems with the concept of a Government-backed ID card. As a non-driver, having a widely recognised form of ID other than my passport, one I can carry with me without effort, could be useful. Given that opening most new financial products, for example, requires me to produce a range of documents, some of which are not readily available, being able to show a digital ID which demonstrated who I am would be easier than finding a utility bill with my name and address on.

I acknowledge the concerns about what an ID database could be used for by an incoming regime, although given the amount of information that authorities hold on us, let alone the information that many of us voluntarily put online via social media, you might wonder if that argument hasn’t effectively been conceded by stealth.

And I really don’t think that I’d be keen on the authorities having a right to insist that I produce ID on demand - others have made the case against that far better than I could.

There are the obvious problems - digital exclusion, data security - before we even start to talk about cost of the ability of Government to deliver what would be a huge project. But the Government does have to answer one fundamental question, which is, “what is the problem that this is going to solve?”.

So far, we are told, it will supposedly curb illegal immigration by making it harder for people without status to find jobs, but it’s already illegal for employers to employ those without the right to work and it’s obviously illegal to use false documents to circumvent those checks. If the Government really wanted to address that problem, a more joined-up approach between HMRC, DWP and the police would probably achieve more at far lower cost and be more visible, presumably one of the benefits of such a crackdown.

In other words, this looks like what I like to call a “Daily Mail policy”, i.e. something needs to be done, this is something, thus it needs to be done, regardless of whether or not it is needed or works.

It is, however, indicative of a sense of panic amongst Labour ranks, or perhaps a response to an evident lack of philosophical purpose. With a huge majority and still nearly four years until they have to go to the country again, you do begin to wonder why they can’t just get on and simply try running things better. After all, after the increasing shambles of Conservative administrations post-Brexit, you would have thought that was quite a low bar to set, but this administration does seem capable of shooting itself in the foot with unerring accuracy.

Spending significant sums of money to look as though you’re achieving something, rather than spending it on something that will actually make the lives of our citizens a bit better might buy you a little positive media coverage (although it probably won’t) but the long-term effect of voters looking around them and thinking that things are a bit better can’t be beaten.

But Labour seems determined to go down the route of doing authoritarian things because, if they don’t, Reform UK will do them. It’s hardly an argument to energise progressive voters, let alone liberals, and the polls seem to back me up.

And with the Greens heading leftwards and the Conservatives drifting rightward towards irrelevancy, there’s an increasing large space opening up for liberal politics. Only time will tell if the Liberal Democrats can take advantage of this opportunity…

Federal Council: not letting the door hit me on the way out...

Three years ago, when I ran for a place on the inaugural Federal Council, my aims were to:

• Establish the Federal Council as an effective scrutiny body, engaging all of its members in its work and using their strengths to establish its credibility
• Build a relationship with the Federal Board based on mutual understanding and respect
• Represent and engage with groups across the Party and Federal Conference to ensure that we focus on what matters to members rather than simply promoting any narrow agenda
• Create reporting channels that allow members to hold us accountable

And now that I'm not planning to run for re-election, and because I really ought to anyway, it seems like I ought to report back. Did I succeed in my aspirations?

The answer is no.

I'd like to think that the goals were reasonable ones, but as it turned out, Federal Council turned out to be the worst committee that I've ever served on. And remember, I've been doing this for the best part of forty years.

Federal Council seems designed to fail in its responsibilities. As Article 9.16 of the Federal Constitution states:

Any decision of the Federal Board called in can be overturned by a vote in favour by at least 27 members of the Federal Council.

Bear in mind that Federal Council has forty members, and that is a very high bar to clamber over, especially when attendance is patchy at best. To put that more explicitly, I cannot find a record of a meeting since I was elected in a "by-election" where twenty-seven members were actually in attendance. Add to this the "minor detail" that, of the twelve scheduled meetings, only nine took place, you might begin to suspect that this first cycle of the Federal Council has been almost entirely an exercise in futility.

So, I would suggest that, as an effective scrutiny body, Federal Council has, at least in this cycle, failed. It is a paper tiger in that, if the members elected to it don't feel a desperate urge to attend, it cannot fulfil the role that Federal Conference assigned to it. I do not criticise individual members of Federal Council - I do not know their personal circumstances except to note that they are all busy people with myriad other commitments. For the record, I appear to have had a 100% attendance record, for all the good it did.

Our relationship with Federal Board was entirely courteous. El Presidente answered our questions as required but, if we're being honest here, when a scrutiny body is as ineffectual as Federal Council was, we're not really a threat to the control of the party that Federal Board theoretically exercises.

I admit now that the third bullet was more of a reference to those who ran for Federal Council to promote a gender-critical agenda. They were effective in that Federal Council spent more time arguing amongst ourselves, or more accurately, dealing with the fixations of a minority than we did actually scrutinising much. But, given that Federal Council got fairly little notice of its potential agenda, again part of the design of the thing, and that much of the work of Federal Board is of restricted circulation, it's hard to imagine how any one member of Federal Council could effectively consult beyond their personal circle of friends and colleagues.

As for reporting channels, there didn't seem to be much of a desire to report back to members although, given how little there was to report, that might have come out of a sense of vague embarrassment as to our general ineffectualness.

So, all in all, a frustrating period on Federal Council, which is why I am not going to run for re-election.

There must have been some positives though, right? Well, I did get to "meet" (all of our meetings were online) some colleagues of whom I didn't know much previously. Chris Northwood impressed me greatly, showing a sense of drive and common sense that will hopefully take her far, within the party and beyond. Caron Lindsay and Chloe Hutchinson were always good company, and a lifebelt to cling to when listening to the Reigate One was more than a gentle bureaucrat could bear.

My fear is that the same divisions that hurt Federal Council so badly will spread across the Federal Committee structure in the next cycle. I acknowledge the right of "Liberal Voice for Women" to run candidates and get them elected, but I do wish that they showed, or even pretended to show, an interest in the rest of the spectrum of the Party's work or activity. Heavens, even Militant Tendency had a political agenda beyond simple control of the party machinery.

Finally, if you're reading this, and are thinking of running for a place on Federal Council, you may wonder what you're letting yourself in for. Don't make the mistake of assuming that Federal Council is irredeemably broken, or that there is no value in trying to make it better. It could be that it was the wrong group of people at the wrong time, or that a different leadership might have taken it in a different direction, or simply that some of us, myself included, were less effective than we ought to have been. 

With a new Committee comes new possibilities, and you might be just the person to help Federal Council fulfil any promise it has. I wish you, and Federal Council well...

This is not a manifesto...

It's that time of year when a young man's fancy turns towards getting the nominations required to run for a Federal Committee. And in each Party electoral cycle since 2010, I've been a contestant.

I had a little bit of a past, in that I'd been elected to English Candidates Committee in 2005 and 2007, but in 2010, both Ros and I ran for a place on the Party's ELDR Council delegation. Ros got a vast number of votes - being Party President probably helped! - and I got elected with her, benefiting from a significant proportion of her surplus.

Much to my own surprise, I was re-elected in 2012 and 2014, and even more surprisingly, won a place on what was then the International Relations Committee in 2014, which I retained in 2016. I lost my seat on what was now the ALDE Council delegation by dint of not being Welsh, and was narrowly shaded out of both positions in 2019. I ended up back on both though due to resignations but, in 2022, I decided that it was time to move on a bit. I'd done all that I thought I could on Federal International Relations Committee, but wanted to stay on with ALDE, so managed to get re-elected to that.

I also ran for a place on the new Federal Council, but came up just short again. And yet again, a resignation created a space for me, and so I was back in harness. I then lost my place on the ALDE Council delegation after a change in the way delegation sizes are calculated saw my spot disappear.

This time, I'm not planning to run. Federal Council has been somewhat disillusioning for reasons I'll write about another time, and I'm not willing to run for a position just because I can. If I don't think that I can add value, it's hard to justify attempting to persuade others to support me.

So, for the time being, I'm retreating to the role of a very minor spear carrier on an obscure Regional party committee and focussing on other things. It's been a good run, better than I had expected, but perhaps someone else should have a go...

If political assassinations are the answer, then I reject the question

Yesterday's murder of the American political activist, Charlie Kirk, is yet another warning to American politicians that, if you keep defining your opponents as evil vermin, you shouldn't be terribly surprised if there are those out there who see it as a challenge to act.

It isn't the first such incident by any means, as the murder of Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the attempted murder of her colleague John Hoffman and his wife in June should have rung alarm bells at the highest levels. These heinous crimes were condemned by most right-minded politicians, who know better than most how vulnerable they are to attack, but the level of misinformation that followed represented a deliberate attempt to blame the "left" for them.

Those of us who have read their European history of the inter-war years will watch events with a degree of nervous trepidation. The collapse of the Weimar Republic was marked by a spiral of political assassinations by the extremists on both sides, leading to a justification of ever more draconian measures against the enemies of the state.

In this country, we have seen a surge in violence against minority populations by thugs claiming to represent the "silent majority", even though polling shows that they aren't silent, and they're certainly not a majority. But we're fortunate in that we have very strong gun laws, meaning that the risks are mitigated to an extent. The United States is not like that, with gun ownership at levels we find difficult to comprehend, and access to both weapons and ammunition far easier than I for one am comfortable with.

And, regardless of what you think about gun control, leadership means lowering tensions, not ratcheting them up for short term advantage. Given what I see of American politics and the unlikelihood of passing gun control legislation any time soon, one can only hope that politicians see that treating their political opponents with a modicum of respect whilst arguing their differences over policy passionately is in everyone's interests.

We don't know much about the apparent gunman in Utah, although that doesn't appear to be preventing an alarming spectrum of people from conjecturing baselessly. You can't stop people from doing that, but you can wonder what their agenda is.

Ultimately, we have to trust the authorities to find the guilty party, and for the judicial system to try them in a court of law independent of political influence. In a country where independence appears to generate suspicion from extremists across the spectrum and conspiracy theorists have platforms that allow them to reach millions, that isn't an easy stance but, if you want real justice, you have to test whether the protagonists can step up to the mark.

These are nervous times for our democracy, but holding one's nerve and standing firm for freedom of speech and belief is what is called for now more than ever. Thoughts and prayers, my friends, thoughts and prayers...