Steel tariffs: Business and Trade Secretary needs to toughen up against Trump PM speech: Starmer "tinkering around the edges" Bathing Water Monitoring Announcement: Ultimately, this is not enough Rennie calls for statement to Parliament on future of University of Dundee Cole-Hamilton responds to Sturgeon stepping down Steel tariffs: Business and Trade Secretary needs to toughen up against Trump Responding to Trump's levelling of 25% tariffs on steel and comments by Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds this morning, Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader and Treasury Spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP said: Being repeatedly kicked by the other side and doing nothing is ...
On Monday 11th March 2025, Gateshead Lib Dem council group met online for what we call our "Motions Meeting". This is held 10 days before a full council meeting and its purpose is to come up with motions for debate. The meeting agreed one motion, about council news releases. Next full council will be on 20th March. Watch this space.
"We may think that the dangers we face today are unprecedented (and in some ways perhaps they are) but history has a way of circling back on itself. When Jo warned that 'Europe still needs Britain, and Britain, Europe' and called for a moment of 'political initiative' to build partnerships, it feels as timely and as necessary now as it did then." Marking 75 years since Jo Grimond was first elected as MP for Orkney and Shetland, Alistair Carmichael finds inspiration in a famous speech by the former Liberal leader. Rachel Hewitt argues that telling boys and men that they're ...
The Scottish National Party has long promoted an unrealistic vision of Scotland's defence in the event of independence. Their incoherent and reckless approach, outlined in the deeply flawed 2014 White Paper, demonstrates an alarming lack of seriousness in dealing with modern security threats. With a resurgent Russia invading Ukraine and probing NATO's defences, the world becoming increasingly unstable and Donald Trump back in the White House openly questioning America's commitment to NATO, the SNP's defence policies are not just inadequate, they are dangerous. The 2014 White Paper proposed a budget of just £2.5 billion for Scotland's armed forces barely enough ...
The return of longer and drier days has seen plenty of jobs to catch up on in the garden, from cleaning out the birdbaths and bird feeders to clearing the vast amount of sticks fallen from nearby trees, deposited during winter storms and mowing the lawn back into some kind of shape. (I always check to see if a frost is due overnight and don't cut if it is.) The return of blossom, daisies, dandelions, early flowers like wallflower, rosemary, wood violet, primrose and pulmonaria is good news for bees and insects. Look out for butterflies like brimstone and skipper ...
Let's continue the ancient tradition I established last week and post another track that's appeared on Liberal England before. This cover of the Alice Cooper song made number 12 in the UK singles chart in January 1998. Which explains why it reminds me of a foggy day at Rugby station a couple of days before Christmas 1977.
On Sunday 9th March, Gateshead Lib Dems held an awayday at Sunniside Club, in my home village. The aim was to produce the party's manifesto for the local elections in 2026. 30 councillors and key seat candidates attended. It was a successful day and by the end of it we had a second draft manifesto. Work will continue over the spring and summer on the manifesto and another awayday will be
Embed from Getty ImagesOne of my unfashionable opinions is that being a local councillor is a very good preparation for being a member of parliament. You are forced to apply your instincts and ideology to an agenda that is not of your choosing, particularly if your party is in opposition. Contrast that with the route to Westminster that the fashionable people approve of - working in a think-tank or becoming a special adviser. In those roles you are not rewarded for finding the weak links in your party's thinking: what gets you ahead us doubling down on its current pet ...
If ever there's an issue - or a sub-section of a broader issue - that sums up the sense that the UK is broken, even eight months after a new government was supposed to set a new direction, it's social care. The crisis in social care has been recognised for decades, but successive governments have failed to tackle it, and it's getting rapidly worse. This is bad enough on its own, but it has two serious knock-on effects: it reduces the effectiveness of the NHS as it cannot release from hospitals some patients who are fit to leave but have ...
A resident recently advised us : "This old battered and broken grit bin suddenly appeared out of the blue at the top right hand side of the lane at the bottom of Seymour Street. The top is dented in and the lid is broken off and there is only a sprinkling of grit in the bottom. It is now being used as a bin as people are chucking rubbish into it." We raised this with the City Council requesting that a replacement grit bin be provided.
Nation Cymru reports on serious concerns that have been voiced over a claim that more than £600m will be invested in Welsh onshore wind projects linked to renewable energy firm Bute Energy and its sister company Green GEN Cymru. The website says that senior politicians including First Minister Eluned Morgan, UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband and Wales Office Minister Dame Nia Griffith have praised the plans, which are backed by Danish investment firm Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) and will supposedly create 2,000 jobs. However, they add that multiple industry figures have raised serious concerns that the £600m ...
