William Tench

 Today, the most anticipated vote of Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference will happen. Conference will decide what the future Liberal Democrat policy on the European Union will be. This is my last ditch attempt to explain why I think voting against rejoin will be a mistake. For those who are exciting enough not to follow Liberal Democrat conference: in essence, members are being asked between a vague rejoin policy ("Conference supports a longer term policy of rejoining the EU") and a policy which commits to nothing ("Conference resolves to keep all options open ... including membership."). There is a third option: a stronger rejoin amendment which calls for the party to actively campaign to rejoin, but nobody seems to be taking that particularly seriously.  As it happens, I was actually happy with the motion unamended. The problem is: to get there, we have to vote against a rejoin amendment. Along with poor briefing to the press ahead of conference, that means that th...

Too long for Twitter: Why I will be voting for rejoin. This was originally a Twitter thread, but quickly got too long. But here's my inane, rambly and ultimately unimportant take on why I think the current anti-rejoin discourse is wrong.  I was originally going to stay quiet on the rejoin question. Put bluntly, I don't really care about Europe policy. Yes, I have spent the best part of three years trying to find a replica of Margret Thatcher's European Communities flags sweater (to no avail), but when I j oined the Liberal Democrats in 2017 it was not motivated by Europe. I believed passionately in a second referendum and was a passive handmaiden to revoke but I've never had #FBPE in my bio, never owned an EU flag beret and don't know the words to Ode to Joy. My motivation in politics and driver towards liberalism has never been about Europe. For the first few days of this discourse I was happy to sit and watch; safe in the knowledge that it was all just noise that ...