Friday 17 January 2020

Back to basics

It is good to see that my party has not succumbed to the temptation to quetsch about Brexit in our response to the PM's programme as laid out in the Queen's Speech. We need to reassert our real reason for existence after a poor presidential-style election campaign, unsuited to the then leader.

Our constitution begins: "The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity." Sadly, for the latter part of the coalition, our then leadership took its eye off the first of those enslavements and belated attempts by the rest of the parliamentary party to redress the balance were thwarted by the Tories. Our support for membership of the European Union flowed from those basic principles and from our internationalist outlook - something else we need to reassert in the face of a prime minister who is determined to pander to the ignorant flag-waving segment of his party.

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