Iain Donaldson

Reform UK’s Council chaos: Why protest politics isn’t enough to run local services

By Iain Donaldson | Sat 23rd May 2026 - 4:33 pm

Local government is about competence, stability and delivering reliable public services — not simply making headlines or winning protest votes. That is why the growing instability surrounding Reform UK councillors should concern voters across England.

Reform UK’s breakthrough in the May 2025 local elections was undeniably dramatic. According to the House of Commons Library, the party won 677 council seats, 41% of all seats contested, and took control of ten councils.

But what has happened since raises serious questions about whether Reform was prepared for the responsibilities of local government.

Liberal Democrats Political analyst, Lord Mark Pack, documented that by April 2026, Reform had already lost 27 councillors elected in 2025 through suspensions, expulsions, resignations, defections or criminal proceedings. That amounts to roughly 4% of the councillors the party had won just 12 months earlier.

The cases included councillors suspended over racist comments, criminal convictions, harassment allegations and individuals abandoning the party altogether.

The instability has continued again after the May 2026 elections. Further newly elected Reform councillors were quickly suspended or condemned over allegations involving racist and extremist content, including Holocaust denial and Islamophobic social media posts.

The issue is not simply the number of councillors lost. It is the speed with which serious controversies keep emerging.

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Meg Challinor

The modern “No Blacks, no Dogs, no Irish”

By Meg Challinor | Sat 23rd May 2026 - 2:31 pm

I, like many in the LGBT+ community am scared right now. I cried yesterday and today about the uncertainty of my future and my friends’ futures.

If you are cis or trans it doesn’t really matter, it’s clear that the guidance from the EHRC is ultimately unenforceable, however it doesn’t need to be enforced to make life uncomfortable for many people. You see, this doesn’t just make public life hostile to trans women, it erodes all women’s rights; trans and cis women alike. If we are not “performing womanhood” to someone else’s satisfaction, you can now be called trans – as if that makes you less than – and asked to leave a space.

And how would one prove they are trans or cis?  A trans person can have all the same external anatomy, legal documentation and appearance as a cis woman, and that is without even considering cis women with PCOS, countless other conditions, or even as was the case with my Mum; she was just a little on the “butcher” side of feminine preferring shorter hair, jeans and a top with no makeup for much of her life, despite being a cis-heterosexual woman she would have also felt at “risk” from this guidance.

Writing about my mum I would like to share a relevant memory I have of her, from when I was much younger; a time where in my home town of Crewe, my Mum – originally from Dublin – played darts for Cheshire Ladies and at a local club level as well.

She was playing at a nearby pub that week, as we walked into the pub with her team the barman told her that we would have to sit in the garden for the night; under an umbrella in the pouring rain, pointing at a sign. “No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish”.  My Mum thinking of me told the barman that I was English, born at the nearby Leighton Hospital, it was only her that was Irish, my Dad is English, she wouldn’t cause trouble; just let me in and I could sit with him, the barman pointed again at the sign, “No Dogs means you can take your little mongrel outside as well”.  This isn’t my only memory of my family being treated like that but it is one that burnt into my brain at a young age, because in the end it doesn’t matter if you fall into the category bigots try to exclude; it just matters if they think you are less than them – I’ve been less than them in their eyes my entire life.

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The Liberator Collective

Liberator 435 is out

By The Liberator Collective | Sat 23rd May 2026 - 12:30 pm

Liberator 435 is out and can be downloaded free here: https://liberatormagazine.org.uk/ where you can also sign up to be emailed when each new issue of Liberator comes out.

This time in addition to Commentary, Radical Bulletin and Lord Bonkers’ Diary, Liberator looks at why concern at the May election results is echoing from every corner of the party despite these being spun as progress.

In this issue:

HOLLOWED OUT AND IN A HOLE

James Graham says the Liberal Democrats are losing touch with all but a narrow slice of the electorate and should reconnect with the rest of the country

A PARTY WITHOUT A MESSAGE

The Lib Dem message became increasingly confused in the 7 May elections in England beyond London, says Chris White

WILL SCOTLAND WANT TO SPLIT OFF?

There was Lib Dem progress in Scotland, but how did the party lose Shetland after 75 years? Nigel Lindsay explains

WALES BACKS AWAY FROM A PRECIPICE

Peter Black explains how the Welsh Liberal Democrats clung on amid Plaid Cymru and Reform victories, but had to keep Ed Davey hidden

LONDON INCHES AHEAD

A Green surge limited Lib Dem progress in the capital. Rob Blackie wonders if the party has an answer

WHY I’M WORKING WITH COMPASS

Roz Savage MP hopes a Compass event will help change how politics is done

WHERE LOCAL ELECTIONS REALLY MATTER

France’s municipal elections directly shape national politics and show a fragmented landscape before the presidential race. Marianne Magnin explains

WATERLOO COMES TO THE WHITE HOUSE

Corruption, hubris, the Epstein files and Iran war are all signs that Donald Trump may lose Congress this year, says Martha Elliott

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Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: Dangerous diplomatic chess

By Tom Arms | Sat 23rd May 2026 - 10:15 am

In the wake of his Beijing sojourn, Donald Trump is embarking on a dangerous and complex game of diplomatic chess with Taiwan as the piece most likely to be sacrificed for the greater American good.

While in China, Trump became convinced what the rest of the world has known for some time. China cannot be bullied. Threats of escalating tariffs and civilisational extinction just roll off the Chinese political back. They have been around a long time and have seen it all.

Next, China is as much of a superpower as the United States. And, if he is going to avoid an Armageddon-like nuclear war, he has to learn to live on the same planet with Beijing instead of baiting and containing it.

Finally, the American president is almost certainly convinced that Xi Jinping is sincere when he says that China wants Taiwan and any American attempt to block a Chinese takeover could easily lead to a Sino-American “clashes and even conflict.”

The three-way dilemma of China-US-Taiwan dates back to before President Nixon’s historic visit to China. It has been resolved with the famous “strategic ambiguity” which was designed to deter war by making the Chinese uncertain about US intervention.

Trump doesn’t do ambiguity. He does transactions. The Taiwan issue presents him with an opportunity to use his much-hyped negotiating skills to pull off one of the great transactions of all time. A tempting prospect which ego would find difficult to resist.

But with whom and how?

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Judi Conner

Marching for Palestinian rights – and our own

By Judi Conner | Fri 22nd May 2026 - 2:26 pm

When 88-year-old Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos addressed last Saturday’s London peace rally for Palestine he confronted some upside-down thinking, and turned it the right way up.

“These are NOT hate marches”, he said, “Quite the opposite! These are NOT no-go areas for Jews…Quite the opposite! A majority of Jews of the world do NOT support Israeli policy…Quite the opposite!”

A good number of Lib Dems attend these Palestine marches each month. We all know the misconceptions spread by journalists and politicians. Few have attended a march, yet they’re happy to label them extremist, pro-Hamas, hate-led, and often predict arrests.

This is tosh. Stephen Kapos is right. These family-friendly, hope-filled events bring together people of goodwill from every race, belief and background, the largest single group being the Jewish contingent. Relations with the police are friendly. I personally haven’t heard racist words or hostility. We are there to protest against genocide and apartheid. To stop arms sales to Israel and find solutions for peace. There is a strong sense of a shared humanity. Is this is considered hate marching? Were the 1980s demos against South African apartheid hate marches? Is it really so radical to show compassion for a suffering people badly let down by the British for more than a century?

The Palestine protest last Saturday (16th May) was probably the most controversial under this Labour government, and it’s worth examining why. Because it was crystal clear that the smearing was coming from – or being supported by – the Prime Minister and the head of London’s Metropolitan Police. In a city proud of its protest rights and traditions this was quite a shocker.

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Tanya Park

The amended EHRC code is an attack on trans rights. Lib Dems should be at the forefront of challenging it.

By Tanya Park | Fri 22nd May 2026 - 12:02 pm

The amended Equality and Human Rights Commission Code of Practice on services, public functions, and associations was laid before Parliament yesterday. It will become law in 40 days unless Parliament acts. That window matters, and Liberal Democrats should be using it.

I have read the code carefully. The headline is this: it does not just reflect the Supreme Court’s ruling in For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers. It goes further, resolving almost every area of discretion against trans people and in favour of those who want to exclude them. It makes inclusion legally risky and exclusion legally safe. That is not what the law required. It is a choice the Commission made.

The Supreme Court ruled that “sex” means biological sex for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010. That ruling set certain parameters. It did not dictate how the Commission should weight trans people’s interests in the proportionality framework, how broadly to define legitimate grounds for exclusion, or how much guidance to give service providers on how to include rather than exclude. Those were judgment calls.

The most significant of them is in paragraph 13.131, which states that a service provided to “women and trans women” could amount to unlawful sex discrimination against women. An organisation that has made a principled, considered decision to include trans women in its women’s spaces now faces potential legal liability for doing so. Inclusion has been turned into a risk. The same logic applies in reverse to trans men: a man’s service that includes trans men is equally exposed. In both directions, the code makes the inclusive choice the dangerous one.

The proportionality framework for single-sex services sounds balanced in principle. Service providers weigh the benefits of a single-sex service against the harm of excluding trans people. But the legitimate aims available for exclusion include preventing “discomfort or distress” in other users, assessed by reference to whether those users “could reasonably object” to someone who “appears to be of the opposite sex.” The threshold is not harm, not complaint, not evidence. It is hypothetical discomfort, assessed by the service provider.

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The Voice

Lords Parliamentary Party reshuffle – who’s who in the new Parliamentary session

By The Voice | Fri 22nd May 2026 - 9:32 am

Readers may have noticed over the past few days a few personal announcements as to what certain Peers will be doing now, so we thought that we’d better provide readers with a complete list. And, with thanks to Humphrey Amos from the Lords’ Whips Office, we can announce that our Lords Spokespeople are as follows:

Leader – Jeremy Purvis

Deputy Leaders – Kath Pinnock and Mike Storey

Chief Whip – Dave Goddard

Attorney General – Martin Thomas

Business and Industry – Chris Fox

Cabinet Office – Mark Pack

Culture, Media and Sport – Jane Bonham-Carter, Dominic Addington (Sport) and Liz Barker (Voluntary and Charity Sector)

Defence – Julie Smith

Education – Shaffaq Mohammed and Sue Garden (Higher and Further Education)

Energy and Net Zero – John Russell

Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – Olly Grender

Equalities – Meral Hussein-Ece and Paul Scriven (LGBT issues)

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Iain Donaldson

Andy Burnham’s mixed record: Why Greater Manchester deserves better

By Iain Donaldson | Thu 21st May 2026 - 1:31 pm

The argument for standing aside in Makerfield sounds “strategic”, but from a Liberal Democrat perspective it is strategically short-sighted, democratically unhealthy, and misunderstands how Reform is defeated.

Political parties exist to represent voters, not simply to game outcomes between larger parties. If Liberal Democrats believe in liberal values, civil liberties, internationalism and local democracy, then voters everywhere deserve the opportunity to vote for those values. Writing off entire areas risks accelerating decline, not preventing it.

The claim that standing and polling poorly makes the party “look inept” ignores Liberal Democrat history. The party’s biggest advances often began from tiny bases through years of consistent local campaigning. Community politics only works if voters repeatedly see Liberal Democrats showing up and fighting elections — not disappearing whenever things look difficult.

More importantly, conceding territory to Labour in the name of “stopping Reform” misunderstands why Reform is growing. Reform’s rise is driven by disillusionment with Westminster, economic insecurity and distrust of the political establishment. Simply asking voters to unite behind Labour does not address any of those causes.

There is also little evidence that parties standing aside reliably stops Reform. Tactical voting works best when voters make informed decisions locally, not when party machines remove democratic choices altogether. Research after the 2026 local elections found anti-Reform tactical coordination was inconsistent because politics is no longer a simple two-party contest.

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Roz Savage MP

Liberalism in the age of AI: building an economy that liberates people

By Roz Savage MP | Thu 21st May 2026 - 11:19 am

For most of the modern political era, economic debate has revolved around one central question: how do we create more jobs?

But what happens when technology begins reducing the need for human labour just as our population is ageing and demand for care, health and support is rising sharply?

Artificial intelligence is already reshaping parts of the economy at extraordinary speed. Entry-level legal work, coding, administration, customer service and research are all changing before our eyes. At the same time, Britain is growing older. More people are living longer, often with complex health or care needs, while birth rates fall and traditional career structures become less stable.

Some see this future and respond with fear. Others retreat into nostalgia, promising a return to a world that no longer exists – if indeed it ever did.

Liberals should do neither.

This moment demands something far more ambitious: a redesign of the economy around human flourishing. Because the real question is not simply how many jobs exist. It is whether people are able to develop their potential, contribute meaningfully, live with dignity and freedom, and participate fully in society throughout their lives. That, surely, is what Liberalism has always been about.

Liberalism at its best is not an ideology of atomised individuals competing endlessly in a market. It is a philosophy of human liberation. It asks how we remove barriers that prevent people from becoming who they are capable of becoming.

That means equality of opportunity. It means lifelong learning. It means decentralisation of power. It means freedom from poverty, insecurity and ill-health. And it means recognising that worthwhile work matters not only because it pays the bills, but because contribution, purpose and dignity are fundamental human needs.

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Simon Banks

What has happened?

By Simon Banks | Thu 21st May 2026 - 9:18 am

In an Essex district, three excellent candidates stood for election to the county council. Two were experienced councillors, one Labour, one Conservative, well-known, well-liked, well-dug-in to their communities and having done plenty for those communities. One was a Liberal Democrat challenger in a division where the sitting Conservative was standing down. This candidate too was highly popular, a district councillor who had accomplished much.

All three lost to Reform. The Reform candidates were unknowns. Their party did not think fit to tell the voters anything about them. They did little locally. Whereas those three losing candidates all ran campaigns highlighting genuine local issues, Reform’s nationally-posted literature had nothing local to say except that the county council’s finances were in a mess; and I would bet that with the slightest of adjustments, they could have deleted “Essex”, inserted “West Sussex” – and probably did.

All three non-Reform candidates were satisfied to highly encouraged by their canvassing and by informal reactions. To experienced campaigners, it looked good.

It wasn’t. Why the mismatch?

At the same time, in a Labour-dominated London Borough, where the then Liberal Party (including myself) broke through in 1982, but Labour later re-established their dominance, the Greens make a spectacular breakthrough. Both the wards where we broke through in 1982 went Green.

What is happening?

Undoubtedly, the two-party system is breaking – no, broken. The causes of decline in the Conservatives and Labour are several and not all inevitable – for example, the Conservatives’ lemming-rush since 2015 to populist intolerance to the point of idiocy; and Labour’s choice of a leader peculiarly incapable of passion or vision. What of the Liberal Democrats?

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Tom Gordon MP

Tom Gordon MP writes…What should the Liberal Democrats stand for?

By Tom Gordon MP | Wed 20th May 2026 - 1:30 pm

The public are very well acquainted with what the Liberal Democrats are against – Brexit, Donald Trump, the sewage scandal, and more.

But in this new, fragmented and up-for-grabs political landscape, we must ask ourselves: what do we stand for?

Last week’s King’s Speech outlined a raft of new Bills likely to be brought forward in this parliamentary session, and it presents us with the chance to show what bold, modern liberalism looks like in practice.

Not ‘eco-populism’. Not the politics of fear, hate or division. But a confident liberalism rooted in freedom, fairness, dignity, and the belief that people should be able to live their lives free from discrimination and unnecessary state intrusion.

There are several areas where that opportunity is staring us in the face.

First, conversion therapy

I believe this is now the fourth time a monarch has read out a government’s plans to bring forward a ban on conversion therapy. By now, many LGBT+ people, including myself, will understandably wonder whether such a ban will ever be delivered at all. Delay after delay, and repeated attempts to carve out exemptions from any such legislation, have stymied and frustrated governments of differing political persuasions.

If legislation does finally come forward, Liberal Democrats must be absolutely clear: a ban is only worth the paper it is written on if it is fully trans inclusive. A partial ban that excludes trans people would not only be morally wrong, it would undermine the very principle behind the legislation itself. And there should be no opt-out for religious institutions.

I am confident that I and my colleagues in the Commons and Lords will approach this boldly true to our liberal values. The country is often less divided on these questions than the world of social media would have us believe. Most people understand a simple principle: nobody should be subjected to coercive practices designed to deny who they are.

That is not a fringe position. It is a liberal one.

Second, leasehold reform

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Donna Harris

Liberal Democrats should be the first choice for women

By Donna Harris | Wed 20th May 2026 - 11:55 am

The recent local elections should have been a moment for honest reflection within the Liberal Democrats. Instead, much of the response has felt overwhelmingly positive, almost detached from the frustrations expressed by many hardworking candidates and activists, particularly in urban areas where our results were deeply disappointing.

Optimism has its place in politics, but if we continue to avoid difficult conversations, we risk ignoring the deeper issues steadily weakening our party from within.

As Chair of Lib Dem Women, Vice Chair Campaign for Gender Balance, and former Council Group Leader and Leader of the Opposition in Lambeth, I believe one issue can no longer be ignored: the Liberal Democrats’ continued failure to properly represent, attract and retain women.

For as long as I have been a Liberal Democrat activist, one question has consistently followed us, both internally and on the doorstep: what do the Liberal Democrats actually stand for?

Many of us have defended the party passionately over the years, pointing to our liberal values, commitment to equality and strong policy platform. Yet despite all of this, the question never truly goes away.

For too long, we have relied on a narrow understanding of campaigning success: leaflets, door knocking and data. Of course these things matter, but they are not enough on their own. Recent elections have exposed that reality clearly.

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Christian de Vartavan

Time for the UK to engage with Europe on AI sovereignty

By Christian de Vartavan | Wed 20th May 2026 - 10:25 am

On Monday evening, a major evidence session of the House of Lords APPG on Artificial Intelligence — of which I am an associate — took place, where it became clear that the question of British and European AI sovereignty is no longer an abstract policy debate but is rapidly becoming a central political priority.

The session, organised by the Big Innovation Centre under Professor Birgitte Andersen and chaired by Lord Tim Clement-Jones, brought together policymakers, academics and industry leaders to confront a stark reality: the UK is too dependent on foreign — particularly American — AI infrastructure, platforms and large language models. This dependence carries significant implications for economic resilience, strategic autonomy and long-term technological capability.

A significant contribution came from Josephine Kant of the newly established UK Government AI Sovereign Fund, an initiative designed to strengthen Britain’s strategic autonomy in AI. Its creation signals a broader shift in thinking — away from the assumption that global markets alone will deliver resilient technological ecosystems, and towards a recognition that public policy must play a more active role in shaping critical infrastructure.

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Elizabeth Jewkes

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Elizabeth Shields’ Ryedale by-election win

By Elizabeth Jewkes | Wed 20th May 2026 - 8:55 am

Josh Babarinde presents award to former MP Elizabeth Shields
Photo credit Yorkshire Liberal Democrats

Women became eligible to stand for election to Parliament in 1918 and the first woman Liberal MP was elected in 1921. Yet until 1986, only four women ever sat as Liberal MPs, half of whom were elected at by-elections.  Between 1951 and 1986 there were no Liberal women MPs at all. Then came the Ryedale by-election and Elizabeth Shields. Elizabeth joined the Party in 1964 after being canvassed by what she describes as ‘an enthusiastic young man’ who talked about the Party’s values and beliefs until she realised they chimed with her own. So she paid 2 shillings and 6d (half a crown) or 12 and 1/2p in decimal coinage and became a member of the party.

Elizabeth became a local councillor and a parliamentary candidate. She stood for Howden in 1979 and then Ryedale in 1983 losing the latter by 16,000 votes. Three years later, the Conservative sitting MP died and Elizabeth was again our candidate. She not only gained the seat with 50.03% of the vote, overturning the huge majority, she won with a respectable margin of 4,940 votes. A swing of 19%. Importantly, she ended the long wait for a woman to be elected as a Liberal MP.  Sadly, the Conservative regained the seat at the 1987 General Election but in the forty years since, the Party has never been without a woman MP. Elizabeth wrote about her experience of being an M.P. in her book ‘A year to remember’. 

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Callum Robertson

Fixing the long-term pensions crisis requires embracing flexibility

By Callum Robertson | Tue 19th May 2026 - 6:22 pm

When I began my working life, my parents gave me the sage words of advice “never opt out of your pension” and warned that I would be setting myself up to fail long term. They are of course, absolutely correct.

However, what my parents, and potentially millions of people may not realise is that whilst I have rigidly followed their advice, there will be innumerable people who either didn’t receive that advice or find themselves in a cost-of-living crisis facing the difficult choice between their bills and their long-term financial security.

Pension planning is admittedly not a subject that sets pulses racing, …

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Mo Waqas

We will not be bullied: standing against hate after the San Diego mosque attack

By Mo Waqas | Tue 19th May 2026 - 6:05 pm

Embed from Getty ImagesI have always stood against hate. I am, at heart, a classical liberal: live and let live. People should be free to worship, to love, to work and to raise their families without fear. That should not be a controversial idea. And yet here we are, watching politics poison the most basic human decency, watching frightened populations be told again and again that their problems are caused by their neighbours rather than by the governments and broken systems that have failed them.

On Monday, two …

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Paul Hindley

Our political timidity has to end

By Paul Hindley | Tue 19th May 2026 - 10:44 am

Our party is gripped by political timidity. At a time when new parties are gaining traction on the left and the right, we appear to be afraid to explore our historic radicalism. We even seem to be afraid to even engage with the major political arguments of our day.

For an example of our political timidity, look at our responses to three of Labour’s flag ship pieces of legislation: the Employment Rights Bill, Great British Energy and taking the railways into public ownership. On each of these pieces of legislation, the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons …

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Mathew Hulbert

Mathew on Monday: Swirling unease among urban Lib Dems

By Mathew Hulbert | Mon 18th May 2026 - 5:14 pm

The celebratory yellow smoke from the 2024 general election may have cleared, but inside the local party branches of some of our major cities a very different kind of atmosphere is settling in. It is a thick, unmistakable sense of urban unease.

Whilst the national narrative remains focused on the “Blue Wall” breakthroughs, a growing contingent of activists and councillors in our urban heartlands are beginning to ask a difficult but very necessary question: at what cost?

As others have intimated on this website over the past week, in the wake of recent local election results the mood among urban Lib Dems has shifted from quiet concern to open frustration and potential dissent.

I got a sense of this when, on Thursday evening, whilst on the train travelling down to London to appear on Talk, I got a message from a very prominent city-based Lib Dem asking if I had a few minutes for a chat. In our subsequent phone call this person, usually very affable, was noticeably reaching the end of their tether at what they perceive as the party leadership all but abandoning us being competitive in urban areas. I gave this a brief mention on Talk later that evening and clipped it up for social media the next day. The reaction from others in the party was interesting and, in some cases, very telling. Whilst most folks agreed that something is going very badly wrong others tried to suggest that everything is hunky dory in the party and there are no problems.

As I suggested on my Political Frenemies podcast on Friday evening, sticking your head in the sand and ignoring the reality of a situation is not a very sensible or useful way to behave for a political party.

For years the party’s strategy has pivoted heavily toward suburban and rural gains – a strategy that undeniably delivered seats in Parliament. However, on the ground in our cities, many feel the federal party is leaving them to rot.

Several well-known figures within the party have now broken ranks. Tom Gordon MP, Cllr Victor Chamberlain and former London Mayoral candidate Rob Blackie have all waded in. In private forums and increasingly public social media posts, activists are criticising recent local election results as a sign of an ever-narrowing political identity for the party. It is clear that tailoring our message so specifically to disenchanted Conservatives in the shires, we are becoming background noise in the diverse, high-density wards of the English North and Midlands.

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Imaduddin Ahmed

Our messaging on Palestine did not cut through

By Imaduddin Ahmed | Mon 18th May 2026 - 2:22 pm

The fallout from this year’s local elections has sparked an important conversation about where our Party goes next. I was recently one of just eight Lib Dem candidates elected to the Council in Haringey, where we worked the soles off our shoes to win twenty-one seats from a base of seven. Without any door-knocking, the Green Party won one of our safest seats and set us back in others. Our experience has been mirrored in other metropolitan areas full of disaffected Labour voters, including other boroughs of London, Manchester (see Jonathan Moore’s “What did the Greens have that we didn’t” and Shaun Ennis’ “Standing Still”), Sheffield, Bradford and Birmingham.

In contrast to the Greens, we lacked coherent national messaging. Apart from Ed boycotting the King’s banquet for Trump over Gaza, which was mentioned positively at the door, we ceded ground to the Greens on agreed upon Lib Dem policy. Erstwhile Lib Dems told me that they didn’t see the Party on the screen, nor know what we stood for any longer. Even an affluent progressive voter told me she felt unrepresented.

By contrast, the Greens have been far more successful at projecting a coherent, values-based identity. Voters saw Zack Polanski as bold, willing to challenge injustice and take clear positions, even where doing so carries political risk.

Palestine is clearly part of that picture.

Voters are looking to be inspired by parties willing to stand up consistently for international law and a values-based foreign policy. The Greens’ vocal and highly visible stance on Palestine has enabled them to fill that space, and there is growing evidence that this has translated into electoral gains in Labour-facing urban areas where we might otherwise have advanced.

In Birmingham, for example, the Greens climbed from 2 seats to 19 while the Liberal Democrats remained static at 12, despite expectations that we would emerge as the main opposition to Reform. This must surely bear some relation to the Greens’ greater clarity on Palestine in a city with four universities, a highly educated Labour vote, and many Muslims, who feel besieged by anti-Muslim Labour and Tory messaging, never mind Reform.

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The Voice

Is this the first public call for Ed to go?

By The Voice | Mon 18th May 2026 - 9:55 am

It is being reported that the our Council Leader in Colchester, David King, has called for a change of leadership. Talking to the BBC’s Simon Dedman, he said;

We need to let the party take the time to look to the future, and that’s my appeal to Sir Ed. It’s politely saying, time’s up.

Whether or not this is simply a reaction to disappointing results in Colchester – the Party lost Shrub End and Stanway wards to Reform – or indicative of a wider movement remains to be seen.

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Mark Valladares

Welcome to my day: 18 May 2026 – five/six party politics requires a new approach

By Mark Valladares | Mon 18th May 2026 - 7:30 am

155 net gains in terms of seats, 3 net gains in terms of councils, more MSPs in Scotland were the headlines after the elections eleven days ago. On the face of it, it looked reasonably good. Not great, but another advance nonetheless.

But, behind the headlines, it has become increasingly apparent that all is not well in terms of the Party’s progress. So many contributions reached us from across the nations, highlighting tales of good campaigns and hard work overtaken by Greens or Reform candidates whose clear messages and perceived alternative to a failed status quo appealed to voters in a way that we didn’t or, perhaps more worryingly, couldn’t.

As an editorial team, even as a medium independent of the Party, we retain a broad loyalty. We don’t want to rock the boat just because we can. But we do believe that we have an obligation to offer a space for members and supporters to debate the issues of the day and it is clear that there is significant dissatisfaction with the strategy of the Party at the centre.

Many potential solutions have been offered over the past week, much of which has come down to expressing more clearly what we, as liberals, believe in. And whilst I would never suggest that I am any sort of political strategist, I have always believed that the policies of a political party should be able to be easily surmised from the basic ideology it expresses. That becomes rather harder if you don’t really expound a political philosophy.

I’m not a radical for the sake of radicalism but it seems to me at least that we have to be clearer about the sort of world we want to create – the “vision thing”, if you like. The Greens and Reform currently have that clear vibe where, even if you have no real idea of what they would do in power, you can superimpose your dreams onto them. They have an identity that we currently don’t.

To make matters worse, the complications of five or six party politics don’t appear to have been entirely factored in. We’re still locked into a strategy of “only we can beat X here” and, whilst that’s effective against deeply unpopular Labour and the Conservatives, and has value against Reform if we have demonstrated that we’re the obvious choice to keep them out, we don’t seem to be able to deal with opposition from both political flanks at the same time in places where we haven’t got a firm presence. And there are too many of those.

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Caron Lindsay

Jim Wallace’s memorial service – 5th June 2026

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 17th May 2026 - 3:30 pm

Portrait of Jim WallaceWe are all still mourning the loss of Jim Wallace earlier this year.

Alex Cole-Hamilton dedicated his acceptance speech when he won his Edinburgh North Western constituency with a vastly increased majority to Jim, recalling his last conversation with Jim a few days before he died.

We all wish he could have been around to celebrate our election success when we more than doubled our 4 MSPs elected in 2021.

We will have the chance to remember Jim at his memorial service which will take place on Friday 5th June 2026 at Dunblane Cathedral at 11.30 am.

The event will be livestreamed on the Dunblane Cathedral YouTube channel and will be available to watch on catch up.

Travel to Dunblane is quite straighforward:

Rail: Regular trains from Glasgow Queen St ( sometimes involving a change at
Stirling) and from Edinburgh Waverley to Dunblane.

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Alan Eurig Williams

Time to embrace our Welsh identity

By Alan Eurig Williams | Sun 17th May 2026 - 1:14 pm

As Shaun Ennis wrote about his frustration about the lack of progress in the North of England by our party, he should be lucky that he isn’t living in Wales.

As a party and a movement that was once the dominant voice of Cymru, seeing our leader Jane Dodds eke through the sixth seat in Brycheiniog Tawe Need at last week’s Senedd election showed what a parlous state the party is in Cymru at the moment. Overall, the situation has not improved since 2016 where our votes remain low and the number of seats won to match. We were lucky indeed to have Jane Dodds, who was a very effective debater and is well regarded by the community she serves and her party in general. But there was no escaping the facts she expressed frustration and dismayed that the party (once a bastion of Welsh politics) has been relegated to the peripheral.

I applaud the efforts by my fellow party activists and campaigners who spend years or decades within their communities pounding the streets, knocking on doors, campaigning in the local community. But when the time came for these communities to vote in the Senedd election, many of them went the other way and voted for Reform, who had candidates expressing horror for having the honour of being elected a member into the Senedd because they were assured by the party that they were paper candidates.

They are now led by a man who left his homeland over thirty years ago and was until very recently the Conservative Group leader in Barnet Council. Given the history of Nigel Farage’s numerous parties, we will look forward not to five years of holding power to account but a term of infighting, rifts, splits and no-doubt shaking down the Senedd for every penny they can get.

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Tanya Park

Stand aside in Makerfield, but make Burnham earn it

By Tanya Park | Sun 17th May 2026 - 10:55 am

Josh Simons resigned his Makerfield seat this week. Andy Burnham confirmed within hours he would seek the NEC’s permission to stand, and the NEC has now cleared him to do so. A constituency most people couldn’t have placed on a map last week has become the most consequential by-election in a generation.

The question now is whether the Liberal Democrats should stand a candidate.

My answer is no, but not as an act of charity toward Labour. As a conditional offer, grounded in a straightforward calculation about what is most likely to advance the things we actually care about.

What the numbers say

Recent local elections in the Makerfield wards returned Reform on 50%, Labour on 23%, and the Greens on 11%. Britain Predicts models a general election baseline of Reform 41%, Labour 28%. Without Burnham as the Labour candidate, Reform takes this seat. With him, accounting for a substantial personal-vote bonus, the same model produces Labour 39%, Reform 36%. A narrow Labour hold. Remove that bonus, split the non-Reform vote further, and Farage’s people win.

Liberal Democrats have almost no presence in Makerfield. Standing a candidate here costs us very little in votes or resources. What it costs, if Reform wins, is something much more significant.

Why Burnham is different

Previous calls for Liberal Democrats to stand aside for Labour have rightly been treated with scepticism. The usual pitch (don’t split the progressive vote) asks us to subordinate our values to Labour’s convenience, with nothing concrete in return. That is not a case worth making.

This one is different, because the policy overlap is not vague and it is not new.

Burnham has been the most consistent internal Labour advocate for proportional representation, saying at the IPPR in January that it is “an idea whose time has come”. He built the Bee Network, the first integrated, publicly controlled bus and tram system outside London, using exactly the franchising model Liberal Democrats have advocated for years. He co-authored the Hillsborough Law, which Liberal Democrat MPs and peers backed comprehensively. He has championed a National Care Service, free at the point of need and integrated with the NHS, since 2010, a position that mirrors what Liberal Democrats delivered in Scotland over two decades ago and have campaigned for nationally ever since. He has called for Land Compensation Act reform, a fairer property levy, and an elected senate of the nations and regions to replace the Lords.

These are not rhetorical positions adopted for a by-election campaign. They are commitments Burnham has held across different offices and different political climates, often against the grain of his own party. They sit at the heart of what the Liberal Democrats stand for.

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Michael Taylor

Why are we so timid?

By Michael Taylor | Sun 17th May 2026 - 8:55 am

The Liberal Party I joined in 1964 was not a timid party. Under Grimond’s leadership, it wanted major changes to the UK. It wanted devolution, voting and parliamentary reform, sexual and racial equality, supported joining the EEC, wanted nuclear disarmament and wanted more cooperatives amongst many other things. And it wasn’t afraid to say so.

Fast forward to today and we seem afraid of our own shadow. We say little or nothing on controversial issues for fear of offending anybody. Dig a little deeper and you find we probably support the same things that we did before but you’d never know. We are criticising Starner for being too cautious, whilst doing exactly the same ourselves.

Often our leadership wrings its hands about a perceived problem but makes no proposals to change them. Take the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of sex. We all know that the right thing to do is to change the law to make the equality act mean what we thought it did, but our leadership’s silence has helped the growth of anti-trans sentiment and made the lives of trans people more difficult. We have gained nothing but contempt for our stance and lost the support of many in the trans community.

We continue with the pretence that the answer to Brexit is to join a custom’s union, when the real problem is not being in the single marker. Obviously, some focus group has been telling the party that support for the SM or joining the EU will upset voters in some undefined demographic.

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Jack Meredith

Welsh Liberal Democrats need more than “stop” politics

By Jack Meredith | Sat 16th May 2026 - 12:55 pm

In many ways, the 2026 Senedd election was historic. Wales is the first country in Great Britain to adopt proportional representation, utilising the D’Hondt voting system over a Mixed Member voting system. Its parliament has expanded from 60 to 96 members. For the first time in over a century, Labour is no longer the dominant party in Wales. Plaid is now the largest party, with its leader, Rhun ap Iorweth, becoming the new First Minister of Wales. Reform UK is the official opposition, and the Greens have made their Senedd debut.

But for all that has changed, one thing has remained the same: the Welsh Liberal Democrats still only hold one seat.

There is no point in pretending this was the result we wanted. While Jane Dodds’ re-election guarantees there is a voice for Welsh liberalism in the Senedd, this campaign has been one of survival, when it should have been one of growth.

The story of this election is far from complex. Welsh Labour’s support collapsed,  while Plaid Cymru and Reform UK grew to represent the governing alternative and protest alternative, respectively. Their messages were simple and concentrated. Plaid argued that Labour had governed for too long, that Reform UK was dangerous, and only the literal Party of Wales could govern Wales as it should be. Reform, meanwhile, argued that the system was broken because of the same old establishment politicians, and it was time for a radical shift.

And what was the Welsh Liberal Democrat message? We argued that “only we can stop independence” and that “only we can stop Reform”. An understandable goal for a party that opposes nationalism and populism, but also one that painted us as reactive and always on the back foot. While Plaid and Reform wanted to bring change to the Welsh government, for better or worse, we told voters to be afraid of change, playing into both parties’ hands by framing ourselves as “just another establishment pro-union party”. 

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Ciaran Morrissey

Should we even be considering contesting Makerfield? 

By Ciaran Morrissey | Sat 16th May 2026 - 10:55 am

With Josh Simons’ resignation on Thursday, the starting gun on the 2026 Labour leadership election was (sort of) finally fired. 

There is now a theoretical, if muddy, path for Andy Burnham to re-enter parliament and become the next Prime Minister. The Greater Manchester Mayor, a vocal critic of Keir Starmer, has announced he plans to apply to stand in the by-election. Reform UK, buoyed by a second set of astonishing local election results, including across most of Greater Manchester, have responded in kind to say they plan to throw everything they can at the seat. The question being raised internally, and that will be no doubt raised externally too, is whether we should allow them a straight head-to-head or whether we should put up a candidate.

I think the answer for this contest, as it is in all contests, is that we should give people a chance to vote Liberal Democrat, and I will try and explain why. 

The first and most pressing point is that we do not own the voters and cannot tell them what to do on either a moral or a practical level. Just because someone voted Lib Dem in a previous general or local council election does not mean they are sitting waiting for instruction from us on how to vote in future. Voters are free to make up their own minds and vote how they wish. Us standing down will not guarantee that any votes go the way that we intend them to. Indeed, any Lib Dem votes in Greater Manchester would be tacit anti-Burnham votes anyway, and so there is an argument that in the absence of a Lib Dem candidate they would transfer to the next anti-Burnham candidate, in this case Reform.

But let’s say we could. Let’s say we could direct those voters to vote Labour and us standing down would lower the ceiling for them. Should we do it then? The answer is still no. Andy Burnham still has to win over a plurality of the rest of the voters in Makerfield. He is standing to be the Labour candidate, on a platform that is explicitly opposed to the current Labour prime minister. What is that campaign going to look like? Are Labour organisers and canvassers going to trawl around asking people to vote Labour to give Labour a bloody nose? Will he be allowed to criticise the government? The logistics of it seem totally incoherent. Labour HQ is not going to allow Andy Burnham to run on an anti-Starmer platform, so Burnham will be relying on voters reading between the lines, not taking the Labour campaign at its word, and hoping that he will topple the Prime Minister. This is a campaign relying on a wink and a prayer and Andy Burnham’s supposed personal popularity. It is not a serious, credible proposal that we should step aside for. 

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Jonathan Moore

What did the Greens have that we didn’t?

By Jonathan Moore | Sat 16th May 2026 - 8:56 am

In the elections on May 7th, Salford Lib Dems suffered an unexpected setback. We lost one of our two councillors (I’m the one who remains), and we came third and fourth out of five in our two target wards. In all three cases, we lost to the Greens. The story was similar elsewhere in Greater Manchester.

In only one of the three wards did we face an active Green Party campaign – the other two wards (including mine, where we lost my co-councillor) were won by pretty much paper candidates. 

The councillor we lost was a fantastically hard working and capable councillor, who was outstanding at proactively dealing with casework and had a great reputation in the ward. There is no sense of him having ‘lost’ the ward – others won it.

I spent most of the campaign in one of our target wards with a truly outstanding candidate. Over a few months we knocked on 3500 doors and had many conversations. We ran a fantastic textbook campaign, supporting a great community activist with a big personality.

We lost to a Green Party that has no real local presence, did little to no door knocking, and put out a small number of generic leaflets, all inferior to our own.

So, what did they have that we didn’t? 

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Tom Walker

Popularity without clarity: communicating our values through policy

By Tom Walker | Fri 15th May 2026 - 6:39 pm

52% of Britons don’t know what the Liberal Democrats consider the most important issue facing the country. Compared against Labour, Conservative, Green and Reform, the electorate have the poorest recall on what the Liberal Democrats are focused on. I argue that this is a result of political parties moving away from values and visions and emphasising radical policy that draws attention to their cause. Where the Liberal Democrats communicate values and not policy, we risk getting lost in the noise of our evolving media landscape.

Radical policy from both Reform and the Greens hint at their underlying values, drawing attention …

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Thomas Worth

Stagnating here – West Sussex at the 2026 local elections

By Thomas Worth | Fri 15th May 2026 - 4:28 pm

Since the results of the 2026 Local Elections, there has rightly been some deep analysis of where we are as a party. Colleagues have argued that we are abandoning the North of England, only focusing on leafy rural areas and are ignoring our cities. While I wholly agree with this criticism, I think it misses an even more crucial point. Even in areas which are becoming our ‘new heartlands’, we are stagnating or even slipping back.

This brings us to West Sussex. As a local member, I do have more to celebrate than some around the country. For the first time since 1997, the Conservatives have lost control of the council, with us being the leading party, albeit tied with Reform. It also looks like we will be able to come to an agreement with other parties and lead the council. However, this top-down analysis misses a tale of two halves.

While in our held constituencies, Chichester, Horsham and Mid Sussex, the party made excellent gains, outside of these constituencies, a different story unfolded. Take Arun District as an example. Of the ten divisions we held before the elections, two of them came from this part of Sussex, namely Bognor Regis East and Littlehampton East. After the 2026 Election, of our 23 seats, none are in Arun District.

Both of the aforementioned seats were lost to Reform, with longstanding councillors losing their opportunity to represent their communities in the new administration. This reflects a national pattern. In areas deemed ‘unfavourable’ or as not having the ‘right demographics’, the party is surrendering ground to new radical alternatives.

Arun District should not be a place where we are losing ground. But even in the 2023 Local Elections, where we excelled across the country, we slipped back here. Too often when speaking to voters on the doorsteps during this year’s campaign, we heard the same message, ‘we like you locally, but we want to punish the government, so we will vote for Reform’. Without us having a clear national message, one with liberal ideas and values at its heart, we will continue to lose in areas like this that we need for future success. Currently,  as we are not seen as important enough on the national scene to even be worth a protest vote for many

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