Tag: Jo Swinson

Below is the text of the statement made by Jo Swinson, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, on 28 August 2019.

I’ve written to the Queen to express my concern at Boris Johnson’s anti-democratic plan to shut down Parliament, and to request an urgent meeting.

This is a crucial time in our country’s history, and yet our Prime Minister is arrogantly attempting to force through a No Deal Brexit against the democratic will. He is outrageously stifling the voices of both the people and their representatives.

It is appalling that the Prime Minister has forced opposition leaders into taking this action. However, we must take all measures necessary to avoid a disastrous No Deal Brexit, for which there is no mandate.

Below is the text of the speech made by Jo Swinson, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, on 22 July 2019.

Thank you all so much.

I am delighted, honoured, absolutely over the moon to stand before you as the leader of the Liberal Democrats.

And as the first woman to lead our party.

I joined this party when I was 17. And over the last twenty-two years, through all the ups and downs, the Liberal Democrats have felt like a family to me.

Conferences, campaigns. By-elections from Brent to Brecon.

Twelve years as an MP, three years as a Minister.

Losing my seat. Winning it back again. And now standing here, as your leader.

Ready, for the fight of our lives. You have put your trust in me not only to lead our party but also to lead and grow the bigger, open, liberal movement that our country so desperately needs.

There are those out there who think liberalism has had its day, that it is somehow “obsolete”.

But when I think of all the amazing people I met on the campaign trail and when I look around this room, I can feel the energy, the passion and the determination to fight for our values. Liberalism is alive and thriving.

In the face of nationalism, populism, the catastrophe of Brexit.

The two old parties have failed.

Our party has been clear on Brexit from day one.

We believe the UK’s best future is as members of the European Union, and that’s why, as your leader, I will do whatever it takes to Stop Brexit.

It’s the Liberal Democrats who can lead the renewal our country needs. Together, we can build a better future.

So, thank you for joining me – whether you are a lifelong Lib Dem or you have joined us for the first time today.

I couldn’t have won this race without the love and support of Duncan, and my mum, or without the pure joy that Andrew and Gabriel bring me. And not a day went by on the campaign that I didn’t think about my dad. He’d have loved today.

I want to thank my incredible campaign team and the many, many volunteers who have helped us over the last few weeks and months. And I want to thank my team in Westminster and in East Dunbartonshire.

This is your victory too – it simply wouldn’t have been possible without all of you.

We all know that running elections is a challenging business, so thank you to the returning officer and the staff at HQ who helped this election run smoothly – not least while fighting two Parliamentary by-elections!

And I also want to thank Ed.

Campaigns are hard. Constant scrutiny. Constant pressure. Endless travel. Endless hustings! So much time away from loved ones. I know Ed and I have both felt this, as we have toured the country from Aberdeen to Plymouth, and everywhere in between.

Ed has carried himself with grace throughout – and never lost his passion, nor his sense of humour.

I have a huge amount of respect for Ed – he was an exceptional minister in Government, and his environmental record is second to none. We have worked together for years and we agree on most things – which, I admit, may not have always made it the most exciting contest. Ed is a friend, and I am proud that we have both run clean campaigns, focused on the issues that really matter.

Ed is a great talent for our party, and I can assure you that he will be absolutely central to our team.

When I decided to stand for the leadership, I did so thinking the challenge facing our party would be a very different one. We were stubbornly on around 8% in the polls. New parties were springing up, courting Lib Dem votes. It seemed that the first task I would face as leader would be to ensure our very survival.

But what a turnaround!

Our best set of local elections ever. More MEPs than ever before. Opinion polls that put us in first or second place.

The Liberal Democrats are winning again.

For that, I pay tribute to my two most immediate predecessors: Tim for taking that brave decision in the wake of the referendum to say unequivocally that we are the party of Remain.

And Vince for your leadership that has brought about our revival, for being the voice of reason in these unreasonable times. Vince, you have served our party and our country with distinction for decades. From your sage warnings before the financial crash, to your work rebuilding our economy as Business Secretary, you have been a constant source of wisdom. And as Leader of our party you have led a transformation in our fortunes. Thank you so much.

I know that I have some pretty big shoes to fill – whether that’s Vince’s ballroom shoes, or Ming Campbell’s Olympic running spikes.

Or Nick Clegg, who put the country first at a time of national crisis and showed that Liberal Democrats can make a real difference when we take power and put our principles into practice.

Paddy Ashdown, who took us from an asterisk in the opinion polls to a credible political force. And Charles Kennedy, who was shouted down in Parliament for his principled opposition to the Iraq war, and whose sincerity endeared him to millions.

And how much we all miss both Paddy and Charles today.

When Theresa May called the general election in 2017, I knew in a heartbeat I had to stand and win East Dunbartonshire again.

People had expressed their shock about the division and nastiness unleashed by the 2016 referendum, but sadly, I had seen it already.

In 2014, Scotland’s independence referendum heralded a new politics, and not in a good way.

Sandra, one of my local members, had a brick thrown through her window, which displayed a pro-UK poster. On the campaign trail, an elderly woman pulled up her coat sleeve to show the pro-UK campaign sticker on the inside of her wrist – such was her fear of wearing it on her jacket. A mob of hundreds outside the BBC, demanding Nick Robinson be sacked. Twitter trolls, fake news, demonising journalists, we saw it in Scotland first.

And since then, that harsh, hostile politics has become the new normal.

On 24 June 2016, I woke to that awful news that Leave had won the referendum. I turned on the TV and saw Nigel Farage, smiling smugly out of the screen, and I’ll never forget what he said – he boasted that they had won ‘without a bullet being fired’.

I just felt sick. Just eight days earlier, Jo Cox had been shot and stabbed to death, just for standing up for what she believed in. Crass, insensitive. Farage just didn’t care. But we should not be surprised. This is the man who stood in front of that Breaking Point poster, deliberately designed to stoke division, fear and hatred in our communities.

And I felt so gutted about the result. Not about the specifics of this or that EU institution. This was about who we are as a country. It feels like our liberal values are under attack.

We champion freedom – but Brexit will mean the next generation is less free to live, work and love across Europe.

We value openness – but Britain is in retreat, pulling up the drawbridge.

We cherish equality, so that every individual can thrive: whoever they are, whatever their background, however they worship. But this is threatened too – that shocking picture of those gay women, bloodied, attacked on a bus. And the rise in Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, in the heart of British politics.

Of course this is not confined to the UK.

Trump’s attack last week on four members of Congress, all women of colour, started with him deploying the textbook racist ‘go home’ message. By the end of the week, we saw thousands of people whipped into fervour at a rally, chanting “Send her back”.

Simply sickening, chilling. Echoes of a history we must not repeat.

Ilhan Omar is a strong woman. She will not be cowed. But my heart breaks: for every immigrant who feels less safe, for every little girl of colour who feels afraid, for every person who feels less welcome in their own country.

And I rage when Boris Johnson is more interested in sucking up to Donald Trump, than standing up for British values of decency, equality, and respect.

Tomorrow, we expect Boris Johnson will take the keys to Number 10 – but he has shown time and time again that he isn’t fit to be Prime Minister.

Boris Johnson has only ever cared about Boris Johnson. Just ask Sir Kim Darroch or Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Whether it is throwing people under the bus or writing a lie on the side of one: Britain deserves better than Boris Johnson.

And as for Corbyn’s Labour, I’ll make this quick. Any party that can’t decide where it stands on the biggest issue facing our country in generations, doesn’t deserve my time, and doesn’t deserve your vote.

We need a Prime Minister who will rise to the challenges we face, not hide away from them.

So I stand before you today, not as just as the leader of the Liberal Democrats, but as a candidate for Prime Minister.

There is no limit to my ambition for our party and for our movement.

I am ready to take our party into a general election and win it.

And, if we want to be the party of government, we need to speak to the whole country, no matter how people voted three years ago.

We need to reach communities from Norfolk to Newport, St Ives to Shetland, Gloucester to Gateshead.

We need to start by being frank about what is going wrong – because the system we have isn’t working for people or for our planet.

If you work hard and play by the rules, you should expect to earn a good wage, have a roof over your head and food on the table – that’s the social contract, and in the UK today it is fundamentally broken.

We have families where both parents are working full-time on the so-called National Living Wage but who can’t provide the basics for their children – I’m talking about food, school uniforms, a warm home.

And a planet that is at breaking point. We are the last generation who can act to stop catastrophic climate change, and yet the government is failing to take the urgent action we need.

In the face of these challenges, it shouldn’t surprise us that people are attracted to the simple soundbites of Farage and Johnson – no matter how divisive, no matter how far removed from reality.

If we want to defeat nationalism and populism, we need to give people an alternative vision for a richer, greener, safer and more loving country.

Because when all that Farage and Johnson can offer is hate, we should give people hope.

And our liberal movement to take on nationalism and populism must be inclusive.

At one hustings, someone accused me of being a feminist first, and a liberal second.

I answered how can you be a liberal, if you are not a feminist?

You are not a liberal, if you do not recognise and unpick the structural inequalities in society that hold so many people back.

As liberals, we want every individual to achieve their potential – and we are kidding ourselves if we think our society is a meritocracy.

So I say to you, if you are tired of a politics that doesn’t include people like you, whether that’s because of your gender, disability or the colour of your skin, your accent, age, or who you love – then join us.

This is a historic moment for our party. A moment of change.

And the urgency of this moment in our country’s history needs us to think and act even bigger.

Whether it’s Brexit or the climate crisis, we don’t have the luxury to wait fifteen or twenty years for us to rebuild our seats in Parliament.

We need to work with others, in whatever form or shape, to keep growing that liberal movement, that force we need in British politics to take on nationalism and populism, and to deliver the future our children deserve.

This is the time for working together, not the time for tribalism.

And my message to MPs in other parties, who share our values is this:

If you believe our country deserves better, that we can stop Brexit, that we can stop Johnson, Farage and Corbyn, then work with us, join us. My door is always open.

And to everyone watching this right now.

If you think that our country is headed in the wrong direction and you want to change that, you need to act too.

Shouting at the television is not enough. You need to join us.

If you want an economy that works for people and for our planet.

If you want to build a richer, greener and safer future.

If you want to keep our family of nations united.

The answer is simple. Come, join us. Let’s do this. Let’s do this together.

Let’s change politics so that we can transform our country.

Below is the text of the speech made by Jo Swinson, the Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, at the party’s annual conference in Bournemouth on 17 September 2017.

Let me take you back to a rainy Saturday morning, 28 years ago. I’m doing what many 9-year-olds do on a Saturday morning, watching TV. It’s a children’s programme called Going Live, presented by Philip Schofield – some of you might even remember it, and depending on your age, nostalgically feel it was no match for Swap Shop or Saturday Superstore.

That particular morning’s show sticks in my mind because in amongst Gordon the Gopher, kids’ cartoons, and celebrities getting gunged, there was an amazing competition. The prize was to win a piece of the Berlin Wall, recently torn down in one of the most pivotal moments of 20th century history.

It was pretty obviously in an entirely different league to the usual phone-ins to win toys, or CDs, or tickets to concerts. I didn’t win the competition, but later on my dad visited Berlin and brought me back a little piece of that history.

I think it’s fair to say that as a child, apart from one Christmas watching the animated film “When the Wind Blows”, I hadn’t given much thought to nuclear war. But the cloud had hung threateningly over the world, at times perilously close to disaster on an unimaginable scale.

Thanks to the diplomacy, courage and political leadership which led to the end of the Cold War, we have enjoyed three decades with much reduced levels of nuclear threat, until now.

The provocative and aggressive actions of North Korea are stoking fear. This is a regime that is prepared to enslave, torture and starve its own people. The UN inquiry was harrowing.

One former prisoner told of being made to burn the bodies of fellow inmates who had starved to death, and then use their remains as fertiliser. Another spoke of seeing a mother forced by guards to drown her newborn baby. A dictatorship showing such unimaginable cruelty to own population, cannot be relied upon to act rationally and step back from nuclear confrontation to protect them.

Some of you are old enough to have survived the Blitz: the sirens, the air-raid shelters, hiding and huddling with family members until the danger passed. What do you tell your children as you run for cover? What were you told?

Now imagine being in Japan in recent weeks, as the news broke that North Korean missiles were on their way. A country where people can still remember the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A country that has endured decades of fallout from those deadly mushroom clouds. What did they tell their children as they prepared for the worst?

When calm heads and brave leaders are needed more than ever, global politics seems broken. A few years ago it would have seemed inconceivable that in such a crisis, China would be a voice of reason, and Russia more measured than America. The politics of the bully is back.

Human rights are trampled. Climate change is denied. Hate and division are spread like poison into society.

Just look at Turkey, until recently a democratic, reliable neighbour. A signed-up member of the European Convention on Human Rights, and in the process of becoming a member of the European Union. But now President Erdowan is cracking down on anyone who challenges him. More than 150 journalists have been imprisoned. The Chair and Director of Amnesty International have been rounded up and face trumped up charges.

In Venezuela, protestors against Maduro’s power-grabbing Executive have been attacked, imprisoned, and tortured. It reminds us that neither side of the political spectrum has a monopoly on undermining democracy and abusing human rights. And it beggars belief that Jeremy Corbyn would rather defend a tenuous link to socialism than condemn these atrocities.

In Myanmar, we are witnessing the appalling ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya by the military led by General Min Aung Hlaing. This religious and ethnic oppression serves as a recruiting sergeant for jihadi groups across the world.

And in Chechnya, back in 2010, I saw for myself the impact of Russia’s disregard for human rights, giving Kadyrov free rein to oppress the population. People told me about house burnings and how the state would make people disappear. I’ll never forget the distraught mother who pressed a photograph of her missing son into my palm. Missing, presumed executed by the state.

In recent weeks, we have seen the terrible power of nature.Hurricanes Harvey and Irma have left a trail of flattened communities and broken lives.20 years ago, Harvey would have been a 1 in a 2000 year event.Yet Irma followed immediately after, wreaking destruction with record-breaking winds.

In South Asia, 41 million people are battling floods and displacement, which destroy lives and livelihoods.

Climate scientists predict that global warming will have reached over 2 degrees by 2050 – far beyond the 1.5 degrees safe limit set in the global climate change deal, the Paris Agreement. 2 degrees of warming will ruin crop production in many parts of the world, leading to disease, malnutrition, and rising food prices.

It is hard to communicate the absolutely urgency of this situation. We must act now to prepare and adapt for the warming that is now inevitable.

And we must radically cut carbon emissions to have any hope of limiting the temperature rise to levels which humanity as we know it can survive.

Just two years ago, world leaders gathered in Paris and committed to an ambitious plan to tackle global warming. Now we face the withdrawal of the world’s largest economy from the agreement, while Brexit threatens to weaken action on climate change in the UK and across Europe.

Every time the world witnesses crimes against humanity, every time there is ethnic cleansing, or genocide, we solemnly say ‘Never Again’.

And we struggle to comprehend, how such horrors unfold. Not just how brutal megalomaniac dictators can order atrocities, but perhaps more how ordinary people in the population can comply. Violent threats are part of the reason, but planning such evil acts also requires another ingredient: hate.

The politics of the bully rely on hate and division.

And we should be very worried about the spread of hate in both our online and offline worlds.

We need to talk about racism and religious bigotry.

For people with brown skin, being abused in the street is a depressing reality.

Levels of anti-Semitic abuse are at a record high.

A tirade of bile is directed at migrants fleeing war-torn countries, the language of “swarms” and “cockroaches” dehumanising these desperate people with heart-breaking stories.

Some of this is fed by the elite cabal of media owners and their hate-filled newspapers. Online communities spreading lies and misinformation have flourished. Russia has a sinister army of social media bots spreading division, and it looks like they’ve even branched out into paying people to be internet trolls.

The footage of Charlottesville was incomprehensible to watch. Just seventy years after the Second World War, white supremacists marching through streets carrying Swastika flags. And the US President draws some kind of moral equivalence between Nazis who kill a woman and people taking to the streets saying there’s no place for that hate. Don’t be fooled if you think this is only in America. Just look at the murder of Jo Cox.

The thing is, all of these hate groups, these extremists – they feed off each other. They seek to pervert cultural, ethnic and religious identities and turn one against another. ISIS is no more representative of Islam than the KKK are of Christianity. They use each other as recruitment tools. We cannot end one without tackling them all.

I know you shared my despair on 24 June last year, as the news sank in that we had voted to leave the European Union. I was completely gutted. Dismayed to be leaving the EU institutions, yes, but distraught at what it said about our country, our values, our vision.

I was altogether more optimistic on the 8th November. The polls were looking good and, eagerly anticipating a momentous night, I popped into the shop to buy some prosecco on the way home. I settled down on the sofa to watch the US Presidential results with an excitement that will be familiar to fellow election geeks, and with a feminist hope that was shared right across the world. As the night wore on, no amount of prosecco could have helped.

President Trump is a product of the anti-liberal forces we face. He is also their poster child.

Faced with rising nuclear tensions, we have a President who picks up his phone not to talk, but to tweet inflammatory rhetoric in capital letters.

A man who has made clear his own support for torture, and wants to ban all Muslims from entering the US, is in no position to advance the cause of human rights.

He puts climate change deniers into powerful positions, defunds environmental programmes and even tells scientists to remove mention of our warming climate from their government websites.

His conflicts of interest are legion, treating the Presidency like a marketing campaign for the Trump brand. And still not a sign of that tax return.

The Trump regime unleashes daily despair, enough to keep liberal America into a state of constant shock.

Trump is a bully, a misogynist and a racist. He boasts about sexually assaulting women. He cruelly mocked a reporter for his disability. He has rolled back trans rights. And for someone who makes much of being straight-talking, he won’t call a Nazi a Nazi.

Yet the Conservative Government thinks it is right to offer Trump the honour of a state visit to the UK.

They are wrong.

It is also a sign of our weakness in a Brexit world. How easily will our values be cast aside in our desperation to sign trade deals to avoid economic catastrophe.

Barack Obama had a rug made for the Oval Office, with his favourite Martin Luther King quote woven into it. It says “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

I’m afraid I am less optimistic, or less patient

As far as I can see, there is nothing inevitable about the triumph of liberal values.

We need to understand what is going on, so we can work out what to do.

The most fascinating research I saw on the Brexit vote was by a Birkbeck Professor, Eric Kaufmann.

He analysed a simple question:

Do you think it’s more important that children are considerate, or well-behaved?

Considerate, or well-behaved?

I read it and my first thought was as the mother of a 3 year old, frankly I’d settle for either.

But amazingly, how people answer this question better predicts whether they voted for Brexit, than their income does.

Let’s try it out. Conference, let’s have a vote. Don’t worry stewards, I’m not going to make you count it, but I do want you to all to vote. Hands up if you think it is more important for children to be considerate?

Hands up for well-behaved?

It holds true for the Trump v Clinton voting patterns too.

The question is used as a fairly neutral way of assessing whether people tend towards respect for authority, or a more liberal approach, do they prefer things to be in order, controlled, or do they openly embrace change?

This is the culture clash that is playing out, in the UK, in other parts of Europe, in the US and beyond.

Politics feels broken. To me, to many in this room, and to many far beyond this conference hall.

We are absolutely right to fight for an exit from Brexit. Brexit will make it harder to follow our values, to protect human rights, to tackle climate change, to solve global problems.

An exit from Brexit is necessary, but not sufficient.

Because this culture clash continues.

And the populists stoke this tension. They do it deliberately. They talk in simple soundbites that scapegoat different groups. It’s all someone else’s fault.

As liberals we know this is nonsense. The Faragey Trumpy angry arsey shouty slogans aren’t a solution to anything.

But we do need to offer our own alternative solutions. And conference, I think we need to have the humility to admit that we haven’t found all the answers yet. And it’s blindingly obvious the other parties haven’t either. We need to be much more radical, both in what we propose and in how we craft it.

The basic deal – you work hard, you get on – feels broken for so many people. How are you supposed to support your family on the minimum wage? How do profitable companies get away with paying tiny amounts of tax? Why are so many people stuck in overcrowded housing, with no hope for change?

We need new, 21st century, liberal solutions to all of these problems and more. We need to get out of our own echo chamber and start bridging the divides in our communities. We need to bring people together to create the answers, leaving no room for the populists to sow their seeds of division.

We can do this.

In the Netherlands and in France this year the populists were defeated. In Canada we cheered Trudeau’s Liberal victory.

Creating the bold vision we need is bigger than any single political party. Indeed it’s bigger than party politics itself. We need to reach out and collaborate across society, with thinkers, activists, the young and the old, faith groups, trade unions, entrepreneurs – and with all of you who want to change the world.

A considerate one. A fairer one. A loving one.

A liberal one.

This is our challenge. And we must rise to it.