The choice on the Brexit menu tomorrow is "Let's Get Brexit done" with Boris Johnson, "maybe Brexit, maybe not, for the many not the few, I just need to figure out which is which" with Jeremy Corbyn or "Stop Brexit and build a Brighter Future" with the Liberal Democrats. All three main parties have distinct messages (or at least a distinct lack thereof), which should make voting at this election a very straight forward exercise. However, campaign experience shows that for the average voter absolutely nothing is clear.
For three years, Brexit has been dominating the political agenda wasting a disproportionate amount of time, effort and resources. Meanwhile, our NHS and schools are struggling due to chronic underfunding, our economy is flagging with minimal growth and the climate emergency is left to be tackled by school children.
As a Liberal Democrat I feel strongly about equality, diversity and inclusiveness and am proud that my party has a long tradition for fighting for these values and associated rights. By way of example, the Liberal Democrats abolished the horrible section 28 and we introduced equal marriage. We have still a long way to go to achieve equality and it saddens me to see discrimination and prejudice against transgender people.
In Brighton and Hove many music venues have shut in the last decade, including the Freebutt, Pressure Point, Blind Tiger Club and Sticky Mike's Frog Bar. These grassroots venues were vital in giving bands such as Blood Red Shoes, the Kooks and British Sea Power early opportunities to tour, as well as sustaining our city's vibrant music scene. Beatrice Bass, our Liberal Democrat Parliamentary candidate for Hove and Portslade, used to be a professional musician who started out at local venues before moving onto international tours. She wants to save our music venues and help keep Brighton and Hove a destination for live music.
The Agent of Change principle in planning law puts an obligation on developers building near live music venues to soundproof new developments, protecting music venues from being shut down from noise complaints ‒ as happened with the Freebutt and Blind Tiger Club. This also applies to other public venues, like pubs or clubs. Thanks to previous campaigns the Agent of Change principle has been added to the National Planning Policy Framework. However many local councils, including Brighton and Hove, haven't fully adopted this and are leaving grassroots venues in danger.
This week, the Office for National Statistics published a shocking set of figures. They show that 726 homeless people died in 2018 - a 22% increase since 2017.
This is an epidemic that is claiming far too many lives, and the Conservative Government is completely failing to get to grips with it. This is an epidemic that is claiming far too many lives
Liberal Democrats have passed the "Music Venues" policy motion at Autumn Conference in Bournemouth.
The new policy, which was introduced by our very own Beatrice Bass, Parliamentary candidate for Hove and Portslade, will protect music venues from closures through legislative changes, listing them as Assets of Community Value and providing more funding. The Liberal Democrats will be collaborating with existing organisations such as UK Music, the Music Venue Trust and the Arts Council.
Commenting on this commitment, Liberal Democrat Shadow Culture Secretary Layla Moran said:
"Liberal Democrats are committed to supporting the creative industries. This is good news for all local areas that have a thriving music scene.
"Too many venues have been shut down over the years and we know how vital grassroots venues are in nurturing local talent. We will do anything we can to protect existing venues.
"We will ask local authorities to implement the Agent of Change principle in local planning law, so that landlords and developers have to provide soundproofing to keep developments next to existing venues noise free."
Beatrice Bass, who submitted the motion to Conference on Monday morning, added:
"I am absolutely delighted that Lib Dem members passed my policy motion to save our music venues. As a former professional musician I am deeply concerned that over 35% of music venues have been closed in the UK in the last decade.
"This policy will ensure that existing venues are protected so that young up-and-coming artists have the space and opportunity to develop into the Coldplays, Muses or Adeles of tomorrow. It demonstrates the Lib Dems' commitment to support the creative industries and our diverse music scene in the UK."
In the three years since we started our calls for a People's Vote on the final deal, your hard work has taken it from a fringe view in British politics to a position that is now advocated by millions of people, and so many more MPs across both sides of the House of Commons.
I went into politics to put something back into the community I am from and to take our country in a progressive direction. My progressive values lead me to strive to work for a fair and open Britain, which has a strong, mixed market economy, in which everyone can achieve their dreams regardless of their background.
So write our local members in the Evening Argus this week.
Rob Heale wrote:
The statistics tell the story... the Lib Dems tripled their share of the vote and number of seats here in the South East Region in the European elections. In Brighton & Hove, they secured an excellent 22.2% of the vote and are the second party in the City, probably for the first time in a century. People can now vote for a progressive, forward-thinking party in the knowledge that their vote really does count.
So as you may have heard - Vince is stepping down. That means a leadership contest has been triggered. Here's how to have your say on the future of our party!
But who can vote for the next Lib Dem leader?
The answer is simple - to vote, you need to join the Lib Dems as a member.
The Liberal Democrats have secured the best ever European Election result in the party's history, returning 16 MEPs nationally and taking second place in vote share.
Lib Dems and Greens both beat the Brexit Party in Brighton and Hove and Labour came 4th.
Local election agent Paul Chandler said: "Many thanks to all in the city who voted Lib Dem today. We realise that for some people this is the first time they have voted Lib Dem. Please, don't make it the last!"
In the South East Region we have returned 3 MEPs on 26% of the vote, finishing in second place. We secured 8% in 2014 and our previous best result was 15.3%.
We have a chance on May 23rd to send a very loud message to Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn.
They're trying to cobble together a deal to get Brexit over the line and we need to tell them that the "will of the people" has changed. A recent YouGov poll showed 61% of people would vote to remain versus May's deal - there is no longer a majority in the country for Brexit!
The Liberal Democrats will fight these elections as an unapologetically pro-European Party campaigning hard for People's Votewith an option to remain in the the EU.
We are determined to give a voice to the millions of people who demand better than Brexit Britain.
We've announced a strong, diverse mix of candidates, from those who've joined the Liberal Democrats recently to those with long experience of the European Parliament.
On Thursday 2nd May we will have 26 council candidates standing across Brighton & Hove.
Vote for the Liberal Democrats for 1,500 new homes, improvements to local mental health services and cleaner air in our city. Vote for the Liberal Democrats to support trans rights, our city's vibrant music venues and more cycle lanes. Vote for the Liberal Democrats to stop Brexit, celebrate freedom of movement and embrace diversity.
The Liberal Democrats will fight these elections as an unapologetically pro-European Party campaigning hard for People's Votewith an option to remain in the the EU.
We will fight these elections on a clear message: a Liberal Democrat vote is a vote to stop Brexit.
Across the country, the strength of our membership of 100,000 is being deployed to prepare for both the European elections and for council elections. Please vote for our EU candidates in the South East Region on May 23rd:
Local election campaigns around the country are going well with just under two weeks left. Like many of you, our home has moved into our regular election machine, and our driveway is the Watford garden poster factory!
If you haven't yet, make sure to ask your local team for a garden poster (or window poster if you cannot have a garden one) and show your friends and neighbours that the Lib Dems are winning here!
On Wednesday 27th March, Brighton & Hove Community Land Trust held the first hustings ahead of the local elections on 2nd May. Duncan Moore was our council candidate representative for the Liberal Democrats, and there is an excellent write-up of the event by Sarah Booker-Lewis of Brighton & Hove News.
We have launched our local manifesto for the 2019 elections, packed with ideas to make our great city even better - by standing up for affordable housing, supporting Save Our Schools and, of course, opposing Brexit and advocating a People's Vote. Check out the web verison here or click on the image for a shareable, printable version. You can also find out who your local candidate is here (updated regularly).
Over 1,000 Liberal Democrats traveled to York and were rewarded with some beautifully crafted and delivered speeches and some from nervous first timers but they were all united in their passion for justice. Delegates from all over Europe spoke about their sadness at the possibility we might be no longer a part of the European Union and all speakers were united in their anger that we will be cast away from the biggest market in the world and the union that had brought peace, solidarity and free movement to so many diverse nations.
Jo started out with a heartfelt tribute to those killed in the Christchurch mosque shooting this morning. "The forces that sow hate and division and seek to turn fellow citizens against each other must not and cannot win"
She then paid tribute to outgoing leader Vince Cable - "a powerful champion for liberalism"
It is a sobering thought that just under 2,000 years ago there were people gathered on this spot no doubt complaining about a treaty from Rome… with tiresome regulations about daily baths and straight roads; muttering under their breath that these legionnaires should go back to Gaul or Carthage.
And you would have heard lots of people saying Interum sumo inferium. For those amongst you who don't converse in classical languages, that means: take back control!
It then took them over 300 years to get their 'Rexit, when the Romans went home. That's the kind of timescale Theresa May seems to be working on. It then took about 700 years for York to recover from this early Brexit.
Eventually it did, mainly thanks to French newcomers. They and their descendants left much that is beautiful in this city, like the Minster.
But there are also reminders of past ugliness. Only a few hundred yards away from here one of Britain's early displays of organised antisemitism when Yorkshire's Jews were rounded up, locked up in Clifford's Tower and burned to death.
That the country should still be battling the scourge of anti-Semitism today is a terrible reflection on our society.
And after this weekend's horrors in New Zealand, Islamophobia is another scourge, indulged by populists and conspiracy theorists - with terrible consequences.
But back to my home city. York is where my life, and my upbringing and my political career began. I have fond memories as a returning native, and I am heartened that York now enjoys a luxury which I hope will soon be more widely shared: a Lib Dem-led council.
And it is a place which is proud of its traditions and identity as a great British city, but open and welcoming to outsiders. York University, a symbol of that openness, welcomed as its first ever student, in 1963, a young woman from Kenya who a few years later became my wife.
And, by the way, the city voted to Remain.
REMAIN
Brexit is dominating the life of Parliament and the country and not in a good way. It is dividing families, communities, and even the United Kingdom and sucking the energy out of government. Last week's farcical debates have diminished even further the standing of Parliament.
Many of the really big issues which will dominate the future - how we live sustainably; how we adapt to and control a new generation of technologies; how we plan for our ageing population - all of these are being put on one side: postponed, ignored, neglected.
I am not surprised that growing numbers of people are simply reacting with a mixture of boredom and anger: boredom because the same arguments are being advanced with robotic regularity; anger because what we were told would be very simple and straightforward is, in reality, hideously complicated.
I am proud of the role our party has played, unapologetically leading the case for Remaining for an Exit from Brexit through securing and then winning a People's Vote. Against all the odds, our cause is very much alive.
We have been quite clear that the 2016 referendum, now more than 2½ years ago, was not a good basis for leaving. It was undertaken solely to satisfy an internal quarrel inside the Conservative Party. A narrow majority of voters, and only 37% of the electorate, voted to Leave.
Facts change, and they have changed. We also now understand much better the scale of the cheating and lying, which went on to secure the result. Without a confirmatory referendum there will be no such thing as the 'settled will of the people': merely a feud without end.
I remain astounded that some people claim a new referendum would be undemocratic. What is democracy if it is not the right for a country to change its mind?
I, myself, serve as an illustration of this principle. In 2015, I was defeated in the General Election and lost my seat. Two years later, in another election, they told me on the doorsteps, and the in the privacy of the voting booth, that they had had a change of heart and I got back with a near 10,000 majority.
Twickenham changed its mind. Britain is now changing its mind too.
And anyone who imagines that getting Theresa May's proposed Brexit through Parliament at the - third, fourth, fifth - time of asking will bring closure and stability is suffering from serious self-delusion.
The Withdrawal Agreement - the divorce - is the easy bit. If Brexit is a political Everest, we have only just got to the Base Camp.
The brief, vague, woolly, Political Declaration doesn't even tell us where the summit is, let alone how to get there. It promises years and years of frustration and friction.
We keep being told, not least by the Chancellor, that once Brexit is agreed and delivered, the fog of uncertainty will lift and there will be a surge of renewed confidence in the UK. Business investment will pour in. We will all live happily every after.
But this is a triumph of political fantasy over economic reality. Any well-run business can see that chronic uncertainty would follow any endorsement of the Withdrawal Agreement. The cliff edge would merely have been postponed for 20 months. Not a great offer.
But it isn't just about business, and economics, important though they are.
As an MP for a university area, containing one of the leading scientific research centres in the country, I see a generation's worth of work going up in smoke. Pan-European teams; the free movement of students and staff and crucial research funding… are all being seriously damaged.
And we are turning our backs on the most successful peace project in European history; a project which brought democracy to Southern European military dictatorships and then to the former communist countries of the East.
That is why Europe is worth fighting for. That is why we will continue to fight to Remain.
Whatever happens in the next few weeks of parliamentary twists and turns, we must argue that none of the many, mutually exclusive versions of Brexit now on offer - soft or hard - are as good as the deal we currently have.
To those outside the Westminster bubble, the parliamentary games on Brexit are baffling: a weird combination of snakes and ladders, chess and all-in wrestling.
So I want to pay tribute to our anti-Brexit parliamentary team, led by Tom Brake, Sarah Ludford and Dick Newby, who together have helped us ensure that we are in the right place on the panoply of Brexit legislation.
I am grateful, too, to all of you. You keep campaigning; You never give up; You continue to believe we can win this historic argument. I am looking forward to joining you and leading you once again in a show of Liberal Democrat strength on the march next weekend. Together we will make a statement, on the streets, that the fight continues, and can be won.
I got into some hot water with some of you last year, suggesting that ours might be a 'movement for moderates'. Naturally, we are - economically - in the centre; supporters of private enterprise, unafraid of active government.
But in the new world of identity politics, we are on one side, not in the mushy middle. We are Remain.
The choice between good and bad, right and wrong, isn't to split the difference. As King Solomon once observed: you don't settle a dispute on the parentage of a baby by splitting it down the middle.
In a world of Trumps, Le Pens, and Putins… the new champions of nationalism and Xenophobia… we are firmly on the other side.
We are Remain. We are internationalist, liberal, outward looking.
If there is one issue which exposes the motives of British politicians today, it is the current bitter arguments over the 'Irish backstop'. For the hard Brexiteers, the pure identity of the United Kingdom as a 'sovereign' entity - which can do what it likes and close its mind to the world - is more important than peace, trade, and prosperity.
For them, our shared history with Ireland is irrelevant; of second order to their own obsessions with nationalism. And to make things worse, this government is so lacking in talent that it employs a Secretary of State for Northern Ireland who makes even Chris Grayling look like a serious figure.
Karen Bradley says she doesn't understand sectarian voting patterns, and then compounds this public declaration of ignorance with a blatantly and naively one-sided view of the killings in the Troubles. Ireland, like Czechoslovakia in pre-war days, is seen as a faraway country of which they know nothing and care less. She has revealed an ugly truth: that peace in Ireland matters less than peace in the Conservative Party.
CAUSES
But just as we are committed to fighting the consequences of Brexit, we are committed to tackling the underlying causes. That isn't straightforward.
We shouldn't be seduced by the lazy clichés and the simple idea that Brexit was caused by deprivation. In fact, some of Britain's poorest cities voted to Remain. And many of the most prosperous towns and villages, in the South voted Leave. But there was a clear pattern of towns in the North, the Midlands, Wales, and coastal England which felt neglected and voted Leave to give the Government, and the wider establishment, a good kicking.
Government must invest heavily in the infrastructure and public services in former industrial or mining or seaside towns. I have set out in a pamphlet, which will be available as you leave, my ideas about how government should approach this. It may not be the most exciting bedtime reading, but it should provide some material for the train home!
The big challenges which my booklet addresses have been obscured not just by Brexit, but by the upheaval in Britain's two main parties. The Conservative Party was, until recently, a broad church; but now it is narrowing to a party of English nationalism. The UKippers are quietly taking over that hollowed out, geriatric, structure and those that don't fit in are being pushed aside.
This is a mirror image of what has already happened to the Labour Party. Ever since the Labour civil war 40 years ago, which led to the social democratic split, there has been an unresolved conflict between revolutionary and democratic socialism. And now there is a nasty twist; the anti-Semites who feed off the conspiracy theories of the 'far left' are back. Reminding us that there is more that unites the far left and far right than divides them.
But the problems of the Labour Party are not just a problem for them, but for all of us.
There are millions of Conservative voters who are disgusted with the incompetence, the self-indulgence and the inhumanity of this Tory Government but so long as Labour appears to be a nightmare, they will cling to the Tory nurse, for fear of something worse.
THE CENTREGROUND
The question I have been asked from the day I took on this job is "why don't the Liberal Democrats fill the political space created by these extremes?" I believe we should, we can and we will.
But anybody who thinks it's straight forward to rush in and fill this so called 'centre ground' will soon encounter the barrier of which we are all too painfully aware. The first past the post voting system.
Every parliamentary constituency and council seat in England and Wales is fought on this basis, crushing the life out of insurgent parties trying to operate as if they were in Holland or Sweden, where there is proportional voting.
Dozens of new parties have been registered in the last couple of years, many claiming to be the Holy Grail of the 'Centre Ground'.
They need to ask themselves a simple question: why isn't the Women's Equality Party running the country? With a potential voter base of over half the population; many sensible policies; lots of committees; a clear, attractive, brand; and some nice people…but they haven't got anyone elected.
They can't get over the hurdle of 'first past the post'. So, when people tell me that a new force can win in France, why not here, the prosaic answer is: this isn't France.
We don't have a Presidential system; and we don't have a transferable vote.
REALIGNMENT
These are the problems and we are all too familiar with them. But there's no reason for giving up.
The massive challenge we face now is to create an alternative to the politics of fear and division; which has attractive, liberal and social democratic values; but is also grounded in the political reality and experience of winning in the current system and running things well at local and national level.
This year's local elections must be the place where we finally shake off the set-back of two damaging general elections, and regain confidence, building on the advances of the last year. We can and will.
The environment in which we do so has now changed. We are seeing early signs of some realignment. The breakaway group of independent MPs is a sign of that.
I have been very clear that we must welcome a realignment of British politics and the opportunities it presents. I have also been clear that we should offer the hand of friendship to those who want to work with us rather than against us.
Most of their statements of policy could have been cut and pasted from ours. But these are early days.
The new group has a following wind from people who are curious about something new, and who admire their decision to break with their parties. But there is nothing yet beyond Westminster.
No local infrastructure. No local base.
They are very exposed to a wipe out in an early election. We aren't. As Tim Farron once observed, we would survive as cockroaches would survive a nuclear war. Speaking as Chief Cockroach, I would prefer a more flattering metaphor, but his point is well made.
But I think we can do more than survive. We can do much more and much better by working with them and others who share our values, to take on the decaying and dysfunctional Labour and Conservative party machines, which have dominated British politics for far too long.
The fringe this weekend where Jo Swinson welcomed Anna Soubry to conference was a very positive step.
FRUSTRATION
One of the reasons that there appears to be some public appetite for something new is frustration with the relentlessly negative and adversarial nature of British politics. There was some tut-tutting in the party when I forged an agreement with the Green Party covering national and local elections in my part of London.
This week Jeremy Corbyn stuck two fingers up at Remainers.
When the time came to vote on the People's Vote amendment, he sat on his hands and ordered his MPs to do the same. My colleagues and I were livid - and judging by the reaction on social media, so were millions of Remainers.
If we've learnt anything this week, it's that Brexit is too important to be left in the hands of the politicians - a People's Vote is the only way forward.
![Chuka Umunna (Chris McAndrew [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)] https://pds.blog.parliament.uk/2017/07/21/mp-official-portraits-open-source-images/)](/en/image/65WnN3/600/600/chuka-umunna.png "Chuka Umunna (Chris McAndrew [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)] https://pds.blog.parliament.uk/2017/07/21/mp-official-portraits-open-source-images/)")
![Jo Swinson (Chris McAndrew [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)](/en/image/61CNnG/600/600/jo-swinson-24.png "Jo Swinson (Chris McAndrew [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)")
