By Peter Harris
| Thu 26th February 2026 - 6:53 pm
The agreement between Britain and Mauritius over control of the Chagos Islands has become one of the most controversial topics of this Parliament. This is a sorry reflection on the state of UK politics. In more normal times, the Chagos deal would be viewed as a diplomatic success story – an example of two states working together to uphold the rules-based international order for the benefit of all concerned.
But these are not normal times. Ever since the government of Liz Truss announced in November 2022 (with the backing of the Biden administration) that it was opening negotiations with Mauritius, critics have scoffed at the idea of “surrendering” the islands to a foreign power. In recent weeks, the accusations of treachery have reached a fever pitch – stoked in no small part by Donald Trump and his friends on the hard right of UK politics.
The Liberal Democrats have a critical role to play in ensuring that the Chagos agreement goes through. The legislation needed to implement the treaty, the Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill, is currently in its final stage of the legislative process. Having cleared its third reading in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, all that remains is for MPs and peers to iron out the final text of the legislation so that it can receive royal assent.
In the Lords, however, the Labour Party cannot do things alone. It depends upon the cooperation of others. The purpose of this blog post is to ask the Liberal Democrats to offer such cooperation at this all-important juncture.
I have studied the Chagos Islands for 18 years. From my perspective, the rights of the indigenous Chagossians have always been the most important dimension of the Chagos dispute. Having lobbied many of your elected representatives and peers over the past two decades, I know that the Liberal Democrats feel the same way. Why, then, do I support the Anglo-Mauritian agreement when so many Chagossians seem to oppose it?
The key thing to remember is that the Chagossian community is divided on the issue of sovereignty. This should not be surprising given that the Chagossians and their descendants number in the thousands and are spread across several countries. They have conflicting interests, identities, and ideas about their homeland – just like any other large group of people.
For four years I worked in His Majesty’s Prison Service. Most of my time was spent with two groups: vulnerable prisoners, often those convicted of sexual offences who couldn’t safely be located on normal wings, and men struggling with addiction. What I learned there shaped my view on drugs more than any political argument ever could.
The truth is uncomfortable. If you are born with a tough set of circumstances, poverty, unstable housing, parents battling substance misuse, you are statistically far more likely to face those same issues yourself. The data backs this up. Around 46% of people in prison report having used drugs in the month before custody. Nearly two-thirds report regular alcohol use before entering prison. A significant proportion have experienced childhood trauma, been in care, or grown up in chaotic households. This isn’t coincidence. It’s a pipeline.
County lines has made it worse. The National Crime Agency estimates that thousands of children are exploited each year in drug distribution networks. These are not criminal masterminds. Many are 14, 15, 16-year-olds groomed by older gang members, often threatened or coerced. Research shows that some county lines “runners” earn less than minimum wage once debts and exploitation are factored in. Yet they risk prison or death.
I remember one young man vividly. He was 18 years old. No stable family. No strong guidance. He had been on remand in the adult prison where I worked. I asked him how his court case had gone. He told me quietly: “I got life.” He had stabbed someone over a bicycle — a situation rooted in drug-related conflict. Two young lives destroyed. Two families shattered. And the state left to deal with the aftermath for decades.
We cannot police our way out of this.
The UK spends billions each year on drug enforcement, policing, courts and imprisonment. Yet drug-related deaths in England and Wales are at record levels, over 4,900 in the most recent annual figures. That is the highest rate since records began. Meanwhile, our prisons are overcrowded, and reoffending rates remain stubbornly high — around 25% overall, and much higher for short sentences.
Other countries have tried something different. Portugal decriminalised personal possession of all drugs in 2001. Drug use did not explode. Instead, drug-related deaths and HIV transmission fell sharply. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction reports that Portugal’s drug mortality rate remains significantly below the European average. Crucially, drug use became a public health issue rather than purely a criminal one.
Scottish Lib Dem Women, the official Lib Dem organisation representing women, took a motion to Scottish Conference at the weekend which called on the Scottish Government to improve women’s health care.
Medical misogyny refers to the gender bias or discrimination women can experience when accessing healthcare.
Instances of medical misogyny include the dismissal of pain as “normal”, a lack of research into women’s healthcare and a general lack of understanding among many GPs.
Medical misogyny can lead to longer waiting times for gynaecological care, which have increased by more than 250% over the last seven years in Scotland.
The motion called on the Scottish Government to:
Launch a public awareness campaign for both medical professionals and the wider public to remove the stigma faced by women seeking help for their reproductive health.
Improve access to diagnosis, end dismissal of symptoms and the normalisation of pain faced by women.
Tackle postcode lotteries of care by enhancing understanding of conditions, including but not limited to, endometriosis, the menopause, polycystic ovary syndrome, hyperemesis and ectopic pregnancies.
Embed a better understanding within the NHS of the effects of reproductive health conditions on period poverty, women’s mental health and women in the workplace.
Vastly reduce waiting times for referrals and then treatment, especially in gynaecology and urology.
Improve training and standards across NHS services in Scotland.
Increase research into reproductive health over a women’s life course, moving away from the belief that this is a ‘niche’ area.
The motion is part of the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ broader strategy to tackle misogyny and Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG).
The debate was emotional, thoughtful and powerful as women shared their sometimes awful experiences in accessing healthcare.
You can watch it here.
Christine Jardine said:
There are too many women who have effectively been told to put up and shut up when accessing healthcare.
There is an insidious and entrenched prejudice around women’s pain, and the cost can be devastating. It can lead to conditions being undiagnosed, to misdiagnosis and, ultimately, to an eroding confidence amongst women about the point of reporting symptoms at all.
The SNP have only added fuel to the fire: by mismanaging our NHS over two decades, they have made it much tougher to deliver the care that women need.
Progress on the women’s health plan has been slow; ministers need to step up and get on with making plans a reality.
Women deserve a system that they can trust and depend on. To build that system, we should be moving heaven and earth to increase awareness and understanding of women’s healthcare, ramp up training and research, and end the damaging waits for diagnosis and treatment.
Kirsten Herbst-Taylor from Dumfries and Galloway proposed an amendment calling for annual gynaecological screening for women. She has been living with Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer and she told Conference:
When I was diagnosed during a routine check-up at my local GP surgery, the disease was already advanced. I underwent extensive surgery and six rounds of chemotherapy.
I am here today because of the extraordinary skills of the surgical team at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh — Dr Pete Sanderson and Professor Stephen Wigmore — and because of the expertise and steady care of my oncologist, Dr Rachel Nirsimloo.
We are incredibly fortunate to have such dedication and excellence within NHS Scotland. I am deeply grateful for the treatment I have received.
But gratitude for treatment must sit alongside urgency about prevention.
In Scotland, around 600 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer every year. It is the most lethal gynaecological cancer. Across the UK, fewer than half of women are diagnosed at an early stage.
Stage at diagnosis changes everything.
When ovarian cancer is detected at Stage I, around 95 percent of women survive five years or more. At Stage IV, that figure falls to around 15 percent.
That is not a marginal difference. It is the difference between life expectancy measured in decades and life expectancy measured in years.
We have national screening programmes for breast and cervical cancer. We do not have one for ovarian cancer. Instead, we rely on women recognising vague symptoms and primary care identifying a rare disease early enough to alter outcomes.
That is not a systematic early detection strategy.
I am asking this conference to support the establishment of a national screening programme for ovarian and other gynaecological cancers, and to give women the entitlement to an annual gynaecological check-up, including ultrasound where clinically appropriate.
Even at Stage 4, there is hope. Treatment advances mean many women now live for years with good quality of life. But earlier diagnosis reduces the need for aggressive treatment and dramatically improves survival.
With survival at around 95 percent when ovarian cancer is detected early, and only around 15 percent at the most advanced stage, the evidence is clear: early detection saves lives. A national screening programme and annual gynaecological checks are not optional — they are necessary.
Let’s make this a reality.
Central Scotland candidate Lucy Smith told of her experience of endless visits to the doctor with abdominal pain and being dismissed. After too long, she was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease. Lucy’s experience was almost identical to that of someone I love very much and it is infuriating that both of those young women had to experience years of hell.
Beatrice Wishart MSP talked about the importance of training future doctors in these issues – asking how many women had been fitted with IUDs without pain relief, being told they would experience only slight discomfort.
Jacquie Bell spoke very movingly of her traumatic birth experience and how the refusal of her doctor to consider home birth meant that her child never had any siblings.
While my own childbirth was not nearly as traumatic, I told the Conference how I basically ran away and hid for a few hours after a male obstetrician told a midwife without reference to me to just break my waters and get on with it. I also added that every time I went to the doctor after I turned 40, no matter what with, it was put down to the menopause. And now I come to think of it, that might be why it took 3 months to get my Glandular Fever diagnosis back in 2009.
Liberals should care about the collapse of serious conservative journalism. Not because the Spectator and the Daily Telegraph were ever friends to progressive politics (they weren’t), but because a functioning liberal democracy depends on a press that engages honestly with reality across the political spectrum. What has replaced these publications’ particular brand of reactionary journalism is something considerably worse: reactionary journalism stripped of any pretence to intellectual seriousness. And that is bad for everyone.
Let us be clear about what these publications actually were. The Spectator spent much of the twentieth century providing intellectual cover for policies that entrenched inequality and treated the interests of the powerful as synonymous with the national interest. The Telegraph was the unabashed voice of privilege: the paper of the officer class, the Home Counties, the quietly certain that things were arranged more or less as they ought to be. To mourn their decline is not to pretend they were ever on the right side of history. It is simply to note that the seeds of today’s dysfunction were present in the editorial culture all along: a culture that prioritised tribal comfort over truth, and consistently failed to hold power to account when that power wore a blue rosette.
The Government agreed to a Lib Dem motion to release the files relating to the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as a trade envoy back in 2001.
The commitment came during a Lib Dem opposition debate yesterday. The debate obviously couldn’t focus on any of the legal issues surrounding anyone at the moment, but MPs from most parties took the opportunity to raise their concerns. It’s good that the victims and the disgusting misogynist culture came in for criticism, but will this lead to meaningful change?
Here are some of the highlights of the debate.
It is highly unusual to hear the Royal Family spoken about in less than deferential terms in Parliament, and Ed referenced this in his speech and apologised for his own previous glowing appraisal of Andrew:
I encountered this at first hand back in 2011, when I was asked to respond to an Adjournment debate on behalf of Lord Green, who was then the Minister for Trade and Investment. The debate was led by the late Paul Flynn, but even he—an ardent and outspoken republican, as I am sure many of us remember, was not allowed to raise any actual concerns about Andrew himself. Paul called it “negative privilege”, and that is what it was. He said his mouth was “bandaged by archaic rules”, and that had very real and damaging consequences. I am pleased to see the Minister in his place, because I know he was also constrained by those rules when he raised similar issues. In that debate, Epstein’s name was not mentioned once, and there was no chance to debate the substance. Standing in for the responsible Minister, I set out the Government’s position, as it had been for a decade, in support of the prince’s role as trade envoy. Looking back and knowing what we all know now, I am horrified by it. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for the survivors and their families to hear Andrew praised like that, as they did so often all around the world, so I apologise to them, and I am determined to change things.
Minister Chris Bryant, never a fan of the Lib Dems, had a go at him later in the debate despite him being upfront about it.
Let me say gently to the right hon. Gentleman that if he had followed the debates in the public domain at the time he would, I think, have known better than to make those comments.
Ed replied:
The Minister knows that I apologised for making that comment, having taken a brief from someone else. I really wish that I had not uttered those words, because I am thinking about the victims, and I have praised the Minister for the role that he took. I hope he will acknowledge that two months after that debate Andrew left the role, and it was right that he did. I was not privy to those discussions, but the Government did get rid of him.
Monica Harding described an encounter with Andrew where he’d had a go at Dolly the Sheep:
Andrew came to an exhibition I had put on about Dolly the sheep. At the time, it was the pinnacle of British innovation, and we were rightly proud of it as an example of UK scientific excellence. One of my team was a young Japanese woman who worked for the British Government as a member of British Council staff. Her job—we paid her—was to promote the UK. She showed the then prince around with some Japanese dignitaries. “Dolly the sheep,” he sneered, “It’s rubbish. Frankenstein sheep”. My team member was deflated and did not understand why this representative of the British state diminished what she was rightly proud of.
Wendy Chamberlain made a vary pertinent point on the use of language:
Does he agree that we still have a degree of that problem now, because often in the media we talk about “under-age girls” when actually we are talking about children, and we should ensure that when we talk about Epstein’s crimes, we talk about the children who were involved?
Tessa Munt pushed the Government to increase transparency measures:
By Caron Lindsay
| Tue 24th February 2026 - 11:30 am
It’s a Liberal Democrat Opposition Day in Parliament today and we have chosen to devote half of it to asking for an investigation on how Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was ever appointed a Trade Envoy and for the Government to publish all the papers relating to his appointment at the time. The motion says:
That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, that he will be graciously pleased to give directions to require the Government to lay before this House all papers relating to the creation of the role of Special Representative for Trade and Investment and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s appointment to that
The gaming industry contributes £188.4 million annually to Scotland’s economy and provides 2181 full time jobs but it’s been facing some challenges in recent years, not least from funding streams drying up thanks to Brexit. A motion introduced by our candidate and, we hope, future MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Neil Alexander. Neil knows what he is talking about as he worked in the industry for 8 years. By the way, Neil’s social media output is the best in the business. Follow him on Instagram here.
The motion calls for:
Establish regional “hubs” across all areas of Scotland for both digital media and video games industry, providing low-cost office space for both sectors, rather than the rent-a-desk options currently available.
Create a Games Innovation Centre to act as a central hub for research, development and expertise sharing, supporting new start-ups with vital business skills.
Launch a new pilot fund to support targeted sector growth for newer start-up studios.
Condition access to any public funding or support body on games companies adhering to fair work practices, such as Fair Work First, to ensure the fair treatment of all employees within the industry across Scotland.
Develop a new educational strategy which actively engages industry-leading experts and supports the next generation of high-quality university courses, putting practical experience, such as guaranteed industry placements.
Explore business rates exemptions for digital media and video games start-ups for the period of a first product release window while these companies establish a steady revenue stream.
my Today marks the fourth anniversary of the second phase of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Phase one started in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and parts of the Donbas – Putin’s response to ordinary Ukrainians’ refusal to disavow their European future. Now is a good time to remember why we are supporting Ukraine; not just because it is right but because we must if the liberal order and the rule of law on which it is based is to survive.
It is also time to recognise Ukraine as central for Europe’s security and prosperity in an increasingly unstable world. We need Ukraine as much as Ukraine needs us and until Ukraine is lifted out of the grey security zone to which previous failed peace agreements have consigned it, there will be a persistent threat to European security.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia could have chosen cooperation with Europe but settled on the path of confrontation, sowing instability in its “near abroad” to maintain control over its neighbours. As at home, so abroad. Putin propped up Syria’s murderous regime to the very last while his Africa Corps supports autocrats and military juntas in exchange for resource concessions and ousting Western partnerships in Africa.
Chaos is not a glitch but a defining feature of Russia’s foreign policy. We feel its effects increasingly in Europe where Russia’s long-running campaign to disrupt, sabotage and sow unrest has intensified since 2022. The immediate purpose is to weaken our resolve to support Ukraine, but the underlying goal is the demise of the global liberal order.
Russian meddling may have affected the outcome of US elections as well as the the fine-edge Brexit vote which materially damaged the security and economy of the UK and the unity of Europe. Neither theory can be proven, but plausible deniability, like chaos, is a feature of Russian foreign policy.
Today’s Schools White Paper on SEND reform is, in certain respects, a document Liberal Democrats should welcome. The investment is substantial: £1.6 billion for an Inclusive Mainstream Fund, £1.8 billion for specialist services, and a long-overdue write-off of 90 per cent of local authority SEND deficits that were pushing councils toward effective bankruptcy. The aspiration, a well-resourced, inclusive mainstream, with early intervention, genuine specialist support, and families treated as partners rather than adversaries, is the right one.
The problem is not the destination. It is the route the government has chosen to get there.
A right is not the same as a promise
The Education, Health and Care Plan, for all its bureaucratic weight, is one of the few places in the British welfare system where an individual holds a judicially enforceable claim on the state. Not a guidance note. Not a promise from a minister at the despatch box. A right. Local authorities that fail to deliver what an EHCP specifies can be taken to the SEND tribunal, and families win the overwhelming majority of those cases, most conceded before a hearing takes place. That near-universal success rate tells you not that the tribunal is lenient, but that the system routinely under-delivers and only corrects itself when legally compelled.
The White Paper proposes to replace many of those plans with Individual Support Plans. ISPs would carry a statutory duty and be monitored by Ofsted. What they would not carry is tribunal enforceability. That mechanism remains available only for EHCPs, which would be reserved for children with the most complex needs. The government projects that EHCP coverage will fall from 5.8 per cent of pupils today to 4.7 per cent by 2034/35. That is not a side effect. It is the stated aim.
When Schools Minister Georgia Gould was pressed this morning on whether children could lose their plans at reassessment, she declined to give a direct answer. She said her job was to talk about the investment being put in. That is not good enough. And Liberal Democrats should say so clearly.
The sequencing problem
The new plans are not proposed to come into force until 2030. The narrowed threshold is intended to begin operating sooner. Children currently in Year 2 and below will face reassessment of their EHCP at the primary-to-secondary transition under the new, tighter criteria.
This timing could not be worse, and it contradicts what we know about how neurodivergent children experience school. Many autistic children, particularly girls, spend primary school masking their difficulties. They exhaust themselves performing adequately, and the cracks appear precisely when secondary school changes the demands on them: different teachers every period, less structure, more social complexity, higher academic pressure. The ‘secondary crash’ is documented in attendance figures, CAMHS referrals, and late diagnosis rates. Removing or weakening legally enforceable support at that exact transition is not evidence-based policy. It is the opposite.
The Children’s Commissioner has called on ministers to confirm that no child will lose their EHCP as a result of these changes. That confirmation has not been forthcoming. The assurance that “effective support” will not be removed is not the same as guaranteeing that no child loses what their current plan specifies.
Who bears the risk?
Lib Dems understand, better than most, that equality of formal rights is not the same as equality in practice. The Sutton Trust’s October 2025 report found that among parents of children in special schools, 41 per cent from wealthier backgrounds had successfully secured a place, compared with 25 per cent from low-income families. The gap exists because navigating SEND requires resources: private assessments, legal advice, time. When the legal mechanism weakens, it is not wealthy families who absorb the loss.
This is a liberal argument as much as an equalities one. Freedom that can only be exercised by those with the means to assert it is not freedom. It is privilege in freedom’s clothing.
The White Paper asks families to accept a weaker backstop on the promise that something better is coming. For a community that has spent years learning, through hard experience, that the system withholds support until crisis is the only option, that is a very large ask.
Hope from The Hague: What Rob Jetten’s victory means for liberals everywhere
Today, in the Netherlands, something quietly historic has happened.
Rob Jetten, leader of Democrats 66, has become Prime Minister. The youngest ever (at 38) and the first openly gay person to hold the office.
Pause on that.
In a European political landscape where we are so often told that the future belongs to the angry, the polarising and the populist, the Dutch electorate has chosen something else. They have chosen the broad, confident Centre.
They have chosen liberalism.
For we Liberal Democrats, there is real encouraging here. Yes it’s a different country with …
In mid February, UK dual nationals were alerted by media reports to an imminent change in immigration regulations. This involves the requirement that dual nationals present their UK passport at the overseas airline check-in desk before boarding any flight to the UK, or that they present (alongside their foreign passport) a ‘Certificate of Entitlement’ to Right of Abode in the UK, priced at a whopping £589.
This deeply concerns many of us in Liberal Democrats Overseas, and we expect the Party to speak out loudly and forcefully on this matter. Will Forster MP, our shadow immigration and asylum minister, has rightly condemned the government’s ‘lack of planning and haphazard communication’ and has called for a ‘grace period’ to enable dual nationals to obtain the necessary documentation. But while a grace period would certainly be welcome, it is not enough. This latest kick in the teeth for dual nationals fits a pattern of contempt for Britons with multinational families on the part of both Labour and Tory governments. Liberal Democrats must stand up for the rights and dignity of all British citizens, whatever their family circumstances.
The core issue in this instance is not the timing of the new immigration measures or the poor publicity. It is the imposition of a £589 charge on dual nationals simply so that they can demonstrate their Right of Abode in the UK (without applying for a UK passport). The cost of a full UK passport currently stands at £95. The government has provided no justification for the exorbitant cost of the ‘Certificate’. This is clearly just one more crude attempt to put the squeeze on overseas British nationals with international family ties; another being the expensive and Kafkaesque regulations surrounding spouse visas.
For those dual nationals who do hold a UK passport, the requirement to show it at an airline check-in desk before flying to the UK is potentially perilous. Many UK dual nationals hold the citizenship of and reside in countries where dual nationality is illegal. Compelling those who hold UK passports to show them at the airport check-in desk could expose them to arrest and prosecution – simply for holding a document to which they are entitled under UK law. Consider, for example, the risks faced by a British-Iranian dual national visiting Tehran who would now be required to show their British passport at airport check-in there in order to re-enter the UK.
Sanne Dijkstra-Downie will, we hope, be an MSP in May. She is standing in the target constituency of Edinburgh Northern and heads the Lothians list.
At Scottish Conference this week, she spoke in our pre-manifesto debate to highlight one particular commitment which is particularly important to her – the provision of Pupil Support Assistants in schools. The pre-manifesto commits us to:
Boost in-class support in every school by inflation-proofing Pupil Equity 270 Funding, hiring more pupil support assistants (PSAs), and ensuring teachers 271 are given proper stable contracts instead of short-term and zero hours work.
Sanne said:
As one of your candidates in May I am so pleased to stand here to speak in support of our pre manifesto, and I absolutely love that line – change with fairness at its heart.
I know we talk a lot about change, and we talk a lot about fairness.
But I especially love the word “heart” in there. Because heart is what we as Liberal Democrats bring to our politics every single day.
And I want to speak to a very specific commitment in our pre manifesto that to me personifies that heart – something means a lot to me personally. And that is our commitment to more pupil support assistants in schools.
In all my time as a parent and as a councillor working closely with my local schools, I have never heard anyone say: we have too many PSAs. We have too much support or even enough support. Quite the opposite.
PSAs support our children’s learning and our children’s wellbeing. Their job is so wide ranging that Edinburgh Council’s own job description for PSAs runs to 8 pages.
PSAs are there to support kids without additional needs, and with additional needs, and they are especially valuable for those kids who have a slightly harder time at school, for whatever reason.
I’ve watched the images of two American aircraft carriers moving toward the Middle East and I don’t feel reassured.
I feel uneasy.
Let me say something clearly before anyone tries to misrepresent this: I despise the Iranian regime. I despise what it does to its own people. I despise its repression of women, its crushing of dissent, its morality police, its execution of protesters, its export of proxy militias, and its cynical use of religion to entrench power. The Iranian people deserve better than the system that rules them.
But despising a regime does not mean losing the ability to think strategically.
The USS Abraham Lincoln is already operating in the Arabian Sea. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the most advanced aircraft carrier ever built, has been ordered into the region. These are 100,000-ton warships, roughly 1,100 feet long, carrying more than 4,500 people each. Floating cities. Human beings. Sailors with families.
They are symbols of American power. Symbols can become targets.
Iran is not Iraq in 2003. It is not Libya. It is not Syria. This is a regime that survived eight years of total war against Saddam Hussein. During the Iran–Iraq War, hundreds of thousands died. Cities burned. Chemical weapons were used. And still, the state endured.
For 47 years, the Islamic Republic has prepared for confrontation with the United States. That is not hyperbole it is embedded in its military doctrine and national identity.
Now place two aircraft carriers within reach of its missile forces, near the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway barely 33 kilometres wide at its narrowest point. One of the most militarised chokepoints on earth.
Iran possesses medium-range ballistic missiles such as the Shahab-3, with a range of roughly 1,300 kilometres. It fields the Khorramshahr, assessed at up to around 2,000 kilometres. It has unveiled the Fattah-1, described by Tehran as hypersonic, with a claimed range of about 1,400 kilometres. It deploys anti-ship cruise missiles. It manufactures Shahed-136 drones designed for saturation attacks,launched in waves, intended to overwhelm.
It’s become all too common for Mid Wales to be neglected by the Welsh Government whenever rail investment is announced. This week’s announcement from the Prime Minister and First Minister, endorsing Transport for Wales’ long-term rail vision, is more of the same.
Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe Liberal Democrats have recently commented on this, highlighting that of the confirmed £445 million out of a possible £14 billion from the 2025 Spending Review settlement, seven new stations have been announced: six situated between Cardiff and Newport, and one in North Wales. Mid Wales, meanwhile, will receive no new stations or any additional investment for infrastructure upgrades, route resilience or signalling improvements.
I live in Neath Port Talbot, within reach of Swansea and Cardiff, so my area tends to get a fair share of Senedd funding. But I have family in Mid Wales, and our lives could not be more different. While I have access to hospitals on my doorstep, my family in Mid Wales has to travel to Hereford. While I have a plethora of public transport options, my family in Mid Wales is restricted to very infrequent buses and, as highlighted above, a rail service which its own government is prone to neglecting.
David Chadwick MP and Jane Dodds MS have raised these issues time and again, to little to no response from the Welsh and UK governments. After a while, you stop wondering whether Mid Wales was forgotten and start suspecting it was simply never included.
The fundamental problem here is not that South East Wales is getting investment. It should. Cardiff and Newport are economic engines, and better rail in the corridor is good for jobs, housing, and commuting. The problem is the way this is packaged and prioritised; it is presented as a Wales-wide “generational” shift, while the confirmed commitments tell a much narrower story. When the Prime Minister can list seven stations and six of them sit in one corridor, you are not looking at a national connectivity strategy; you are looking at a commuter belt strategy with a press release attached.
I have to be honest, it’s a while since I’ve watched Ed Davey’s Conference speech live. I’m usually to be found at Not the Leader’s Speech. I mean, I can watch the speech on You Tube later, but the precious time with my friends I only see twice a year can’t be replaced.
However, the pubs weren’t open yesterday morning at 10 am when he delivered his speech to Scottish Conference. Having not seen him do this for a while, I have to say he’s really become a lot more confident in his delivery and his stage presence has become significantly more compelling.
He paid generous tributes to both Ming Campbell and Jim Wallace, whose absence was felt by us all.
There have been times when having the federal leader in Scotland has had our press team in spasms of anxiety because they could never be sure what he was going to come out with that might not be helpful, but Ed was 100% on message, amplifying our theme of “Change with fairness at its heart”
A choice between our Liberal change, and Nigel Farage’s Trump change.
Liberal Democrat change – true to British values. Transforming our economy, improving our public services and renewing our politics.
The real change people crave.
Change with fairness at its heart.
Or Farage’s change. Change away from the country we love, to a version of Trump’s America we fear.
As Liberal Democrats, we pride ourselves on internationalism grounded in law, evidence and moral seriousness. That is precisely why the increasingly casual use of the word “genocide” in debates about Israel and Gaza should concern us.
The 2024 provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice did not determine that Israel has committed genocide. The Court found that there was a plausible risk requiring provisional steps to prevent escalation. That is not the same as a finding of genocidal intent – the specific legal threshold required under the Genocide Convention. No final judgment has been delivered.
To present provisional measures as proof of genocide is legally inaccurate and politically inflammatory. If we are a party that believes in international law, we must represent its rulings faithfully — not selectively.
None of this means Palestinian suffering is not real. It is devastating. Civilian casualties in Gaza have been tragic. Settlement expansion in the West Bank remains wrong and corrosive to the prospects of a viable Palestinian state. Rhetoric from Israeli ministers such as Bezalel Smotrich rejecting Palestinian statehood is damaging both morally and strategically.
But outrage cannot substitute for analysis.
The war did not begin in a vacuum. It followed the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – an attack by Hamas that deliberately targeted civilians and sought to provoke exactly the kind of regional conflagration we are now witnessing. All hostages have now returned, many tragically murdered, but that does not erase the crime or Israel’s legitimate security concerns.
A sustainable two-state solution requires an Israel that is secure from armed groups committed to its destruction. That principle cannot be abandoned simply because it complicates the narrative.
Nor can we ignore Palestinian political failure.
The Palestinian Authority, dominated by Fatah, has for years been crippled by corruption, patronage networks and absolute democratic decay. President Mahmoud Abbas is now in the twentieth year of what was meant to be a four-year term. Elections have been repeatedly postponed. Dissent is suppressed. Critics and journalists have been harassed or detained. Security coordination is often designed less to build accountable governance and more to maintain elite control.
By Caron Lindsay
| Sun 22nd February 2026 - 11:04 am
For the first time in over twenty years, the Scottish Liberal Democrats can approach the Holyrood elections with a degree of optimism. Our Conference this weekend was buzzing. Held in Dynamic Earth, a tourist attraction overlooking the Holyrood Parliament (well worth a visit if you are in Edinburgh), there was a real feeling that this was our time.
Introduced by two recent by-election winners, leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said that we were on the cusp of a huge Liberal Democrat revival and the presence of a large number of Lib Dem MSPs would mean that we would get things done. He said we were aiming to win 10 constituencies, up from four, and gain on the peach ballot.
Russia is a petro-state. Its economy. Its ability to feed its people and, most important of all, its ability to wage war, is tied to the price of a barrel of oil. Twenty percent of government revenues come from the oil and gas industries.
Back at the start of the Ukraine War the price of oil peaked at $120 a barrel. Vladimir Putin was able to wage war, pay pensions and maintain social services while keeping inflation under control and fending off sanctions.
This week oil prices dipped to $62 a barrel. And to persuade the likes of China, Hungary and Slovakia to face the wrath of sanctiongs-imposing countries, Moscow discounts the oil price by $20 a barrel.
But there is more. One of Russia’s biggest oil customers was India. Recently, Narendra Modi caved in to American pressure and dramatically cut Russian oil imports.
And there is still more. The Americans, French, British, Swedes and others are starting to board and impound ships in the “shadow fleet” of unregistered oil tankers carrying sanctioned oil around the world. Sixty percent of the roughly 1,000-strong “shadow fleet” of oil tankers are believed to be carrying Russian oil.
All of above, plus the cost of the war, is beginning to be borne by ordinary Russians. Food inflation, for instance, has soared by 12 percent since Christmas. And if Russians want to eat out that option is fast disappearing along with restaurants and cafes displaying “Open” signs.
Growth in the Russian economy is slowing to a crawl last year it grew by just 0.6 percent and the IMF forecast for this year is 0.4 percent. VAT has gone up. Interest rates are 15.5 percent. Corporate taxes have increased. The government is twisting the arms of bank managers to buy war bonds and the sovereign wealth fund has shrunk from $130 billion at the start of 2025 to $50 billion.
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov is under increasing pressure to produce new and better money-making ideas. His latest is government-owned online casinos.
None of the above is surprising when one considers that the defense budget is reckoned to take up between 40-60 percent of the government budget.
Ukraine is in a terrible state. But Russia—with a million war casualties on top of its economic problems—is not far behind in the war of attrition.
Japan
The unexpected landslide victory of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party has opened the door to a long-cherished aim of Japanese conservatives—revision of the constitution to allow Japan greater military freedom.
In the aftermath of World War Two the allies forced a constitution on Japan which “forever renounced” war. Over the years the pacifist document has been re-interpreted several times to allow the development of a formidable “self-defense force.” But the Japanese military is still constitutionally prohibited from participating in foreign wars or building any weapons that allow them to do so.
Takaichi wants to change the constitution to allow Japan to develop a “more normal” military. With a two-thirds majority in the DIET she can achieve that aim.
Britain is caught betwixt and between emerging international power lines. It supports Ukraine against Russia and Denmark against America. Whitehall is all for a European defense build-up.
It wants free trade and hates tariff. MAGA, the cult of Trump and the American swing to authoritarianism is extremely distasteful.
Mark Carney’s middle countries bloc appeals, and the UK is likely to sign up to a Carney-proposed trading bloc that includes Canada, the EU, Britain, and the Pacific Rim countries and excludes the US.
But the British “Establishment” can’t bring itself to break with the US. Britain and America’s economies are too intermeshed. So are the military and intelligence establishments. But perhaps most telling of all, the “independent” British nuclear deterrent—the deterrent which allows the UK to lay claim to reduced great power status—is dependent on American made Trident missiles.
Britain may no longer be a member of the European Union but the EU is still the UK’s largest trading partner and geographic realities dictate that Britain’s security is inexorably tied to the continent. In fact, British trade, prosperity and security is tied to both Europe and America and it prospers most when the two sides of the Atlantic work together.
So the Foreign Office mandarins are likely to fall back on the traditional strategic narrative of UK acting as the link between Europe and America; calming troubled waters one day, offering wise counsel another and shifting its limited political weight back and forth to achieve an equilibrium. In short, the UK will “muddle through” with strategic anchors in lands to the East and the West.
It was clear from the recent Munich Security Conference and the NATO defense ministers meeting that an honest broker between Europe and America is becoming increasingly essential. A furious Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told the Munich conference that trilateral talks between the US, Denmark and Greenland are floundering as President Trump continues to demand ownership of Greenland.
Meanwhile, in Brussels, US Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby told NATO defense ministers that Europe was no longer a defense priority and that “the US would be reducing its capabilities in Europe to a more limited and focused presence” in order to move troops to the Indo-Pacific region.
Our esteemed Treasury Spokesperson Daisy Cooper recently announced plans to replace the Treasury with a Department of Growth tasked with promoting economic growth and ending the cost-of-living crisis and a Department of Expenditure. The very first event of Spring 2026 Conference in York is the Consultative Session for the Thriving Economy Policy Working Group, doubtless where many members plan to contribute other inspired and radical proposals to boost our economy.
I write to make one such proposal: the establishment of a Bank of the United Kingdom with a complete monopoly on banknote issuance, principally by rescinding the issuing power of the six authorised banks.
Some of you, dear readers, may question the point of this proposal in light of digital payments. With 61% of Britons making cash payments at least once a week, there is still a place for physical payments in our society, especially for use by vulnerable people and in the eventuality of digital system failures.
How banknotes are issued in the UK makes little to no sense. Bank of England notes are not accepted in Scotland or Northern Ireland, and Scottish and Northern Irish notes are generally not accepted in England or Wales by virtue of being promissory notes. Bank of England notes are the only ones that may be traded internationally, included via bureaux de change. This system of barriers helps contribute to the weighting of our economy towards London.
In response to the Great Recession, the 2009 Banking Act required the authorised banks to hold in reserve the same value of Bank of England notes or gold as banknotes they have in circulation, amounting to over a billion. In effect, while a Bank of England £5 note cannot be used in Scotland or Northern Ireland, an authorised bank would need to possess one to ensure the value of every one of its own £5 notes. This leads us to the oddities of £1,000,000 (‘Giant’) and £100,000,000 (‘Titan’) notes which cannot be spent as even readers of Mark Twain may attest.
There were three principal council by-elections this week, and all three had a Liberal Democrat on the ballot.
In Redcar, this by‑election brought a much broader field than the last contest, with five parties on the ballot. Congratulations to Councillor Alison Barnes and the local Liberal Democrat team, who secured a convincing win, taking the seat from an Independent who had originally been elected for Labour.
Redcar and Cleveland Council, Zetland
Liberal Democrats (Alison Barnes): 446 (50.8%, +15.5)
Labour: 191 (21.6%, –25.2)
Reform UK: 119 (13.5%, new)
Green Party: 65 (7.4%, new)
Conservative: 62 (7.0%, –10.9)
Liberal Democrats GAIN from Independent (elected as Labour)
When I sat down for lunch with a local council leader one afternoon, in a café adjacent to a YMCA, one of the first things we discussed was capacity. The ability of the state to serve its people, to foster a society where they can access social mobility, and to give them support when they need it. As I sat down and talked with them, drinking my “woke” chai latte, I understood some of the problems we faced in Somerset and it was upsetting. Children unable to access SEND schooling, or falling out of education. People waiting many months for affordable housing, forced to rent privately. Elderly people living in precarity to afford social care.
Often we think about this country and the state that it is in, and all we can feel is despair; which is completely understandable. The canyon between earnings and living costs is ever-growing. Services keep being cut year-on-year, and there’s no money to restore them in real terms. Councils being forced to tackle potholes, graffiti, and overgrown vegetation like a game of whack-a-mole – I blame Eric Pickles in particular.
In 2010, when we came into government, the economic outlook was not good. We had just faced a global crisis of horrifying proportions, and as such policy programmes were devised. The Conservatives wanted to reduce a “structural deficit” through austerity, so that we could “live within our means”. They believed if they could cut debt as a proportion of GDP, through cutting expenditure, they could close a gap – but look at how much wider it has become.
One evening I was speaking to my Local Party chair, and she informed me it would cost four billion pounds to restore SEND provision funding in real terms. To put that into perspective, that is 18% of Rachel Reeves’ fiscal headroom (£22bn) from the Autumn Budget. Now extrapolate that to the rest of the state. Capacity wasn’t just “cut” in the immediacy of austerity, but it was left to wither. And the British people have paid the price; through fiscal drag, anaemic wage growth, a quicksand poverty line, and the persistent anxiety of precarity.
So what does that have to do with my latte in a YMCA-adjacent café? Well, this wasn’t any café; it supports our community, residents in the YMCA, and even helps people out of precarity. The Purple Spoon provides freezer meals, free to anyone who needs them; no questions asked. It is doing something that is emblematic of social liberal philosophy.
Many decades ago, in a different world, liberals envisioned a state that would support people to live. Not through paternalism, but through liberty through security. Despite what some say, welfare isn’t about paying people to “do nothing”, but two things: investing in people and supporting them. Yet Britain has stopped doing the former, and does the latter quite poorly.
Things can get better
But as I sat there, talking to this council leader and drinking that coffee, despair suddenly turned into hope. Not a naive, euphoric lightbulb moment, but a way forward. We can’t go back to where we were before 2008, but we can choose a better trajectory than managed decline. I understand our problems aren’t simple, but pragmatism and pessimism aren’t the same.
For many of us growing up in the 1970’s the TV superhero Hong Kong Phooey was a regular fix on our televisions, despite only running for one series of 16 episodes. Mild mannered janitor, Penry Pooch by day, and superhero by night, ably ‘assisted’ by his sidekick Spot the Cat.
Oddly this bumbling character seems an early metaphor for the Starmer government with its bumbling mild mannered Prime Minister and his trusty sidekick Morgan McSweeney, constantly making U-Turns and never really being seen for who he really is by the people around him.
A former bumbling Prime minister coined the phrase “Captain Hindsight” which does sum up his record with a massive seven U-turns before he even got to 10 Downing Street and a further 15 (and counting) since. Perhaps the opening titles to Hong Kong Phooey could be changed for the modern era to:
Captain Hindsight
Who is this super hero?
McSweeney? No.
Angela, the brash northern Deputy? No.
Keith, the mild-mannered PM? Could be!
As of February 2026, the Keir Starmer government has made 15 major U-turns costing the British Economy over £8 billion (est) since taking office in July 2024. These reversals, often following backbench rebellions or legal challenges, include significant shifts on taxation, welfare, and civil liberties.
The problem for Labour is not only the number of U-Turns, but the fact that 15 of them have been on major front line policies, from tax to social care, from workers rights to human rights, and the feeling that it creates in the country is that you really cannot rely on Labour to have your back.
What’s more they have impacted on the economy, and at a time when Brexit is depressing out exports to our largest trading block, causing major financial distress for our exporters, and the Trump government is playing Hokey-Cokey with international tariffs, all this does nothing to bolster the investment markets and generate the much-needed growth.
The Liberal Democrats and the need to move away from the ‘Core Vote Strategy’
After the catastrophe of 2015, when the Liberal Democrats were reduced to eight seats and 8% of the vote, the party needed a serious strategic overhaul. The 20% core vote strategy developed by Mark Pack and David Howarth provided it. It argued that survival required cultivating and appealing to a voting bloc rooted in a younger, more tolerant and pro-remain base. And that foundation could carry the party through difficult cycles.
At the time, that was exactly what we needed. The result has been 72 Liberal Democrat MPs, a series of impressive local by-election results, and institutional power to present as essential to any coalition of the left-centre. It’s what attracted young professionals like me, looking to an alternative to the chaos in Westminster, to join in the first place.
But strategy cannot remain stagnant. The political environment of 2026 is radically different from that of 2015. Voters are simply less loyal to parties, demographics are shifting, and the two main parties are being replaced by insurgent movements. The Labour Party for example has fallen sharply in national vote share since the 2024 election, dropping from 35% to around 21% in recent polling. And the Conservative party faces extinction on the right. And yet the Liberal Democrats have barely moved still hovering around 13% in the latest polls. As the third largest party we should be filling that void.
So what’s holding us back?
The obstacle facing the Liberal Democrats today is not the absence of a clearly defined ideology. It is the absence of perceived viability and the failure to fully capitalise on systemic volatility.
The good news from this data is that voters are not primarily worried about our values, the party has broad appeal. They are worried about whether we can win.
The latest implementation of the Employment Rights Act is not an attack on order; it is a move away from procedural friction and towards fair, workable industrial relations. Liberal Democrats should say so.
The Employment Rights Act changes now taking effect should be easy for Liberal Democrats to welcome. Not because we owe any particular institution a blank cheque, but because we believe in free association, fair process, and accountable power. In the labour market, power is not held only by the state; employers also hold it.
For a decade, trade union law drifted towards procedural friction. The Trade Union Act 2016 added extra thresholds and compliance burdens that went well beyond the basic question a liberal state should ask: is the action lawful, transparent, and democratically authorised? The Government’s own factsheet is clear that the point of repeal is to remove “unnecessary restrictions and red tape” and to reset industrial relations towards co-operation.
What has changed is not the removal of rules, but the removal of rules designed to make lawful collective action harder in practice. The 40 per cent support threshold for “important public services” ballots has been overturned; strike mandates now last 12 months rather than six; and the notice period for industrial action has been reduced from 14 days to 10. Requirements around picket line supervision have been scrapped, and protections against dismissal during a 12-week protected period of lawful action have been restored.
These details matter. When the law becomes a maze, disputes do not disappear; they become more bitter, more legalistic, and harder to settle. Unions and employers end up spending energy on compliance theatre rather than negotiation. Shortening the notice period to 10 days still leaves time to plan safely, but it reduces the incentive for brinkmanship and delay.
There is also a clean civil liberties argument. The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 allowed employers in key public services to require specific individuals to work on strike days. Whatever one thinks about service continuity, naming individuals and compelling labour are heavy tools for a liberal democracy. Its repeal at Royal Assent was therefore a welcome return to negotiation over compulsion.
The reforms also take aim at politicised regulation. Both UNISON and the Government factsheet highlight the narrowing of the Certification Officer’s remit, so it is driven by member complaints rather than third-party fishing expeditions, alongside the removal of the Certification Officer levy. Liberals should recognise the principle here: regulators should uphold integrity and member rights, not act as instruments of political harassment.
Liberal Democrats along with the SNP, the Green Party and several Independent MPs have recognised that Israel has committed genocide as defined by the Genocide Convention. So far so good.
The bad news is that the failure to act by the British and other governments frankly amounts to complicity in war crimes. The UK Government still hasn’t announced how it plans to follow up the 2024 ICJ judgements which warned of the plausible risk of genocide, confirmed that Israeli settlements are illegal and stated that other countries should not have any dealings with those settlements.
The Trump ‘Peace Plan’ has done nothing to end the occupation, and the Board of Peace includes indicted war criminals Netanyahu and Putin, with not a single Palestinian. (Nor a single woman!). As Kaja Kallas, the EU Foreign Affairs chief, said at the Munich Security Conference last weekend, the Board’s Charter doesn’t even mention Gaza or Palestine and risks undermining the United Nations.
It is 78 years since Israel was created and forcibly displaced over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, systematically murdering many on the way. 78 long years that Palestinians have lived under occupation, displacement, and collective punishment.
In the past 29 months, 72,045 Palestinians have been reported killed in Gaza by Israeli arms. This official toll, which the Israeli military has now endorsed, only includes confirmed direct deaths from bombings and shootings, where bodies have been found. It does not account for indirect deaths, from disease or starvation, for example, or for bodies still under the rubble. Over 500 Gazans have been killed since the so-called ceasefire – many for straying close to the Yellow Line to which Israeli troops have withdrawn but keep arbitrarily moving.
Last week, Rupert Lowe launched his new “Restore” party. Restore what, exactly? Strip away the branding and the flag-waving and what you’re left with isn’t renewal. It’s resentment. It’s grievance politics dressed up as patriotism.
To me, it looks like a diet BNP the same division, repackaged for the social media age.
And I’m tired of pretending it isn’t dangerous.
Circling this movement are voices openly advocating “re-migration” the idea that British citizens like me should be sent “back” somewhere else. Steve Laws has pushed exactly that kind of rhetoric. According to this worldview, my place in this country is conditional.
I was raised in Bolton, making me a Boltonian
My accent is Northern. My upbringing was working-class. I grew up around graft, shift work, tight budgets and pride in standing on your own two feet. I support England in the football. I complain about the weather. I queue properly.
But because I am brown and Muslim, there are people who believe I don’t quite belong.
That should alarm anyone who believes in equal citizenship.
Alongside “Restore” sits the so-called “Advance” party. Advance where? Because this feels like reverse gear. Even Ben Habib, who aligns himself with this hyper-nationalist energy would, by the cold logic of “re-migration,” eventually find himself on the wrong side of the same purity tests. Ethno-nationalism does not stop at one target. It keeps narrowing the circle.
History has shown us that, again and again.
I am Northern. I am working-class. I am British-Pakistani. I am Muslim. Apparently that makes me suspect in certain political circles. What angers me most is that these movements claim to speak for the working class.
In 1900, the wealthiest one per cent of people in Britain controlled an estimated 70 per cent of all personal wealth. By 1990, that share had fallen to under 20 per cent. It was the most sustained redistribution of wealth in British history, and it was not inevitable. It was the product of deliberate policy choices: progressive taxation, labour rights, universal public services, and democratic reform.
That settlement is now being unmade. The wealthiest one per cent of UK households again hold the same share of wealth as the entire bottom half combined. The 50 wealthiest families hold more combined wealth than 34 million people. UK billionaire wealth has grown roughly four times faster than median household wealth since 2008. We are living in a new Gilded Age, and it should trouble liberals deeply, because concentrated wealth is concentrated power, and concentrated power is the enemy of individual freedom.
This is the point that gets lost when inequality is treated as a concern only for the left. The liberal tradition, at its best, has always understood that freedom without material security is hollow, and that unchecked economic power threatens political liberty just as surely as unchecked state power. Lloyd George understood this when he introduced the People’s Budget of 1909. Beveridge understood it when he identified Want as one of the five giants to be slain. The question is whether today’s liberals are willing to apply that same logic to the new concentrations of wealth and power that define our era.
At A Just Society, we argue that they should, and we have set out a detailed programme for how. Our proposals operate across the same three domains that ended the first Gilded Age: taxation, universal provision, and democratic reform.
Limitarianism would introduce a progressive annual levy on extreme wealth: 1 per cent on fortunes between £5 and £10 million, 2 per cent up to £1 billion, and 3 per cent above that. The revenues would be earmarked for opportunity-enhancing investment: ending child poverty, a £10,000 citizens’ inheritance for young adults, care provision, and the green transition. This is not punitive redistribution. It is the principle that extreme fortunes built on shared foundations should sustain those foundations.
Sir Ed Davey’s recent Defence proposal to start selling war bonds so that we can “move far faster” on UK defence spending, was welcome. The state of our armed forces is far poorer than these dangerous times call for. The UK’s ability to project its defensive capabilities within our own neighbourhood would be severely tested and likely found wanting if it were to be needed any time soon.
Whilst I was pleased to see that there were the beginnings of a party plan on funding the defence investment needed. I was left wondering how ready we are as a party for war, hybrid war or almost war. Sir Ed rightly called out that “we’re in almost a Cold War type scenario” with a nod to Russian use of drones, submarines and shadow fleets, calling it a “serious threat”. However, I believe this underplays our current predicament.
Is it too hard to believe that with a mixture of dark web, bitcoin, crime gangs and vulnerable youth we are close to the Kremlin orchestrating a campaign of disruption and destruction across Britain? Our transport links are vulnerable to something as simple as a person being seen walking on or near a train line. We’ve already seen what damage untrained amateurs can do to our defence capabilities.
Let me make this clear: GDP is not an accurate measure of prosperity. Nor is it an adequate measure of wealth. As Robert U. Ayres argues in “The Economic Growth Engine”, it is a measure of economic activity. It only accounts for capital that is generated as a result of the depletion of “natural capital” (i.e the environment). It does not account for societal wellbeing; nor does it account for the losses of wealth (i.e pollution) resulting from the depletion of “natural capital” resulting from economic activity.
So with all of these limitations, why on earth are policymakers, politicians, and economists still using it as a metric for social and economic progress?
Not accounting for the costs of pollution is a choice, but the fact is that these costs remain present. The reason why we don’t see the costs of economic growth is because economists dismiss them as “externalities”. This is how the current Labour Government can justify that a “win-win for economic growth and natural recovery,” (DEFRA: Environmental Improvement Plan, 2025) can happen, even though growing the economy is inherently coupled to the depletion of the natural environment. You don’t get an economic product from nothing, you have to get the resources from somewhere, and that only comes from either the extraction from the natural environment or from solar energy.
Aside from the essential renewable energy transition which can use solar energy to fuel the pursuit of economic growth, there will always exist economic needs and thus industries that require the extraction of natural resources. The EV transition is an example of this, with electric batteries requiring the extraction of critical Earth minerals. The increasing demand for EVs due to the green transition will inevitably lead to greater depletion of the natural environment.
It can be correctly argued that a move to a circular economy will reduce the pressure for industry to extract resources from the natural environment. The circular economy is a vital component of an environmentally just world: by extending the life-cycle of products we can massively reduce the environmental impact of the economy. However, even if as Ayres argues that 100% recycling is theoretically possible in a closed system, it is not a practical aim.
As an item is recycled, the useful energy we can extract from it degrades over time. The more times we recycle a product, the more energy we have to put in to extract the useful energy out of it. We would have to put increasingly larger amounts of energy into a product to recycle it, and this aim is not realistic.
How many solar panels, wind farms, dams would we need to build to obtain this energy to recycle these products repeatedly, on top of the increasing electricity demand that we require for the green transition? Imagine the extent to which we would have to deplete the natural environment to extract the necessary raw materials required to build that.
Nigel Jones I feel the first step is to invest more in a health approach and see how it works; the cost of this could be justified on the basis of reducing the number endin...
Tanya Park Mo, this is exactly the argument that needs making, and it lands harder for being rooted in what you actually witnessed rather than abstract principle.
The P...
David Allen Let's not get hung up on what we don't know about Paul Marshall. There is plenty that we do.
Paul Marshall bankrolled the Orange Book, a major and successfu...
Tom Bailey You are correct to suggest that a locked prison door is not the answer to this substance addiction problem. The human condition seems to require a chemical “...
Peter Wrigley I have disant memories of the old Liberal Party Council debating this issue in the 1960s. at least in regard to cannabis.. The Young Liberals put froward a con...
In mid February, UK dual nationals were alerted by 
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An elephants' graveyard: Toton sidings and locomotive depot today
Two more councillors join Lib Dems
More Sunniside letters
Are the government scamming students?
Nigel Jones
Tanya Park
David Allen
Tom Bailey
Peter Wrigley