Saturday 14 January 2012

The F word

Thinking of the recent exchange of handbags between David Cameron and Alex Salmond, I am not afraid to use the word "federal". William Hobhouse sums up my feelings and, I believe, most of the Liberal Democrat party:


Liberal Democrats believe in the Union with devolution just as we believe in the EU with subsidiarity. We see a world with global, European, national, regional and local problems, and we seek to build political structures where decisions are taken by the right people in the right place. We are unionists because we believe in Britain with our shared language, our shared history and our shared culture.
The debate on Scottish independence gives the Liberal Democrats a golden opportunity to set out a distinctive unionist vision for Great Britain. Unionist within Europe. Pro-European, totally committed to being at the heart of the EU, sticking up for Britain and better preserving and enhancing our Scottish, Welsh, Irish, English and British identity.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A part of the Liberal/Lib Dem pre-amble to the constitution once included something about avoiding nationalists like the plague....shame the pre-amble still doesn't contain this phrase.

Frank Little said...

I'm not old enough to hold a copy of the old Liberal Party constitution, but I found this from a Liberal & LibDem manifestos web-site (it dates from 1964): "In the nuclear age mankind cannot afford narrow nationalism."