Thursday, December 28, 2017

Liberal England in 2017: Part 2

April



Gillian Mawson's guest post on World War II evacuees proved very popular.

"If they were setting out to lend support to the idea that European cause was a cause for metropolitan types who laugh at the rest of us while eating their artisan quinoa, they could not have made a better job of it." No, I did not like the New European article on Skegness.

Sir Edward Garnier, who turned out to be the retiring MP for Harborough, was a Remainer. His successor won't even tell us how he voted in the referendum.

I was quoted in the Bath Chronicle saying that the Liberal Democrats had a good chance of winning the city at the general election. This proved more accurate than many predictions made at the time.

A Conservative local election leaflet used one of my photographs and I was taken as an explorer in Loughborough by two boys who were probably not ghosts.


May


The local elections were a disappointment for the Lib Dems, but we held the ward I live in.

An archaeological dig of Roman remains in Leicester attracted crowds and I stalked the Boughton Obelisk.

I went to St Albans to help in the general election campaign.

Discussing the importance of John Noakes, I suggested that the Sixties were an unusual decade in that the British rather liked children then and that life should be more like Go With Noakes.

It was all too long ago to worry many voters, but I explained why Jeremy Corbyn's attitude to Irish Republican terrorism worried me.


June


I went to see Newark Castle and the former Lutterworth police station.

The men in sandals came for Tim Farron. I said Jo Swinson should calm her allies down, but there was no need. She withdrew from the contest and Vince Cable became the new leader without a contest.

An old Liberal Democrat News column turned out to offer an analysis of class and politics in Kensington after the Grenfell Tower fire.

Other visits took me to Northampton's Eleanor Cross and the Buddhist cafè at Kelmarsh.

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