Why I've resigned from the Liberal Democrats and will be supporting Labour

Where I explain why I can no longer be a member of a party which appears to be edging closer to the Tories and Reform

When Ed Davey was elected leader of the Liberal Democrats, I thought one of two things would happen: the party would continue to lack popular support, thus keeping our number of MPs in the low 10s, or he would push the party rightwards, away from the values which brought me to the party, in a bid to drive up popular support.

In the end, technically, both of those outcomes have come to pass.

Sure, the Liberal Democrats returned 72 MPs in July, but they did so on a national vote share of 12.2%, an increase of a mere 0.6 percentage points against 2019. While they gained 64 MPs, they did so riding a wave of anti-Tory sentiment in so-called ‘blue wall’ seats by seeking to appeal to conservative voters.

Despite promises of providing ‘constructive opposition’ to the Labour government, that trend of cosying up to traditional Tory voters has only continued since the election.

Take, for example, two controversial policy areas: winter fuel payments and agricultural property relief from inheritance tax, which I will discuss in more detail.

Warm this winter

I have long believed that winter fuel payments should be means-tested. While families are struggling to feed their kids, why should our tax money be used to subsidise wealthy pensioners’ heating bills?

I am not going to sit here and pretend the government's scheme to pit eligibility for winter fuel payments against certain benefits is perfect: many pensioners who are just above the threshold and already budgeting hard to make ends meet will find themselves struggling this winter. (As an aside, Martin Lewis popped up on one of my regular podcast listens with a similar view to mine, and suggested that the payments should instead be means-tested against council tax bands, which would be far fairer).

But the Liberal Democrats have only carped from the sidelines without proposing any meaningful alternatives. So much for constructive opposition!

Meanwhile, my own attempts to provide a reasoned opinion within my own local party have been met with disdain and shot down by people who really should have no business defending benefits for the wealthy.

It's time for radical reforms to inheritance tax

Farming for tax breaks

Shortly before the budget, I argued that the chancellor should do something radical with inheritance tax (IHT). While she did not re-examine the nil rate bands as I had discussed in my post, she did act radically in rejecting the erstwhile consensus that agricultural and business property should be wholly shielded from inheritance tax.

While Reeves is implementing a combined £1 million cap on agricultural property relief (APR) and business property relief (BPR), it is only the former of these which seems to have attracted any real criticism.

The Liberal Democrats have joined the Tories and Reform in calling it the ‘family farm tax’. Sigh!

Prior to the budget, the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax) analysed some of the potential changes to IHT. They examined all estates which submitted IHT returns between 2018 and 2020, and uncovered some revealing statistics about a relief which everyone from the Telegraph to the Liberal Democrats are now campaigning against.

In that time period, around 1,300 estates benefited from APR, to a saving of almost £900 million in inheritance tax. 64% of this saving was earned by estates with agricultural property in excess of £1 million: just over 200.

There are, of course, arguments in favour of family farms and food security. But the reforms set out in the budget will affect only a small number of the very wealthiest estates. Many of those are not even involved in farming; CenTax discovered that just 44% of the estates which benefited from APR had received trading income from agriculture at any point in the five years prior to death.

Instead, it appears from this research as though a majority of estates holding agricultural property are doing so as a means of reducing their IHT bill when they die. Certainly that was Jeremy Clarkson's motivation: in his own words ‘the critical thing’ when he purchased his £4.25 million farm ‘Diddly Squat’.

While Reeves has sought to introduce a fairer system, protecting smaller farms while ensuring the wealthy pay their fair share, once again the Liberal Democrats are carping from the sidelines without proposing any meaningful alternatives. So much for constructive opposition! During a recent urgent question in parliament, for example, the party’s MPs, one by one, fell into line behind Tory and Reform MPs in arguing against taxing wealthy landowners their fair share.

And again my own attempts to provide a reasoned opinion within my own local party have been met with disdain and shot down by people who really should have no business defending tax breaks for the wealthy.

These are just two examples. I am sure there will be more between now and the next election.

Backyard brawls

Okay, I've started so I might as well go on.

Perhaps my biggest bugbear for most of the time I have been a member of the Liberal Democrats are the NIMBYs. Regardless of the causes and what individuals may think of them, the country is in the grip of a housing crisis. House prices and rents have both risen out of control, leaving far too many people priced out of the market and pushed into relative poverty.

I am aware that building houses isn't by itself a magic bullet. But the basic law of supply and demand suggests that as supply increases, demand decreases - bringing prices with it. My generation has been well and truly shafted by the Tories over housing, and only a radical house building programme could even begin to undo that damage.

The Liberal Democrats went into the general election with a commitment to build 380,000 new homes every year. You can argue about the viability of that pledge, but it was the most ambitious house building commitment of any party.

Except it very nearly wasn't. The policy was adopted by the party’s members at conference three or four years back, but the leadership, running scared of the NIMBYs they needed to support them, wanted it gone. So they proposed a new policy which was put before conference last year. Their target: 150,000 social homes per year, but removing the 380,000 overall target.

The party leadership wanted to introduce a ‘community-led’ approach to development. Given just about every community opposes just about every development (often with the support of Liberal Democrat candidates vying for public approval), the policy would effectively have created a ‘NIMBYs’ charter’. If implemented, it would have been heaven-sent for people like the member of my local party who makes it their business to put in objections to just about every development for whatever spurious reason they can think of.

The proposal was met by an amendment accepting much of the leadership’s desired policy, but retaining the 380,000 target. I wasn't called to speak, but I was in the room for the debate and it was … interesting. Tim Farron was selected as the leadership’s attack dog against the amendment, and boy did he go on the attack - including calling those of us who want to see enough housing being built ‘Thatcherites’. To say his speech made my blood boil would be an understatement. I still haven't forgiven him.

The amendment passed, by a strong margin in the end, but that hasn't damaged the NIMBYs’ resolve. Far from it: only last month deputy leader Daisy Cooper put out a leaflet in her constituency opposing the new housing target in her constituency of St Albans. Meanwhile other MPs have opposed building solar farms and reservoirs - the vital infrastructure NIMBYs complain is needed before housing can be built.

Walking out of the conference hall after the housing debate, I was approached by a BBC journalist asking for my thoughts (I was wearing my ‘build more bloody houses’ t-shirt at the time). I told her I was delighted that conference had made the right decision, but I was ‘disgusted’ with Farron’s ‘offensive’ speech. To my knowledge, my words never made it beyond the reporter’s phone. They were made in the heat of the moment, but they were genuine. And they haven't changed. Hearing Farron now argue in support of wealthy landowners after calling those of us who just wanted enough housing to go around ‘Thatcherites’, is hypocrisy in the extreme.

It is not what I signed up for when I joined a party which was meant to be the grown-up in the room.

Delaying the inevitable

I returned to party politics in 2017 to campaign for change. I joined the Liberal Democrats because it was the party which I thought most closely aligned to my values.

However, I guess now would be an appropriate time to confess: at that general election, while the proverbial ink was still drying on my membership application, I voted for Labour for the first time in a general election. It was a tactical vote, in a vain attempt to kick out the incumbent Tory MP (who ultimately won by over 9,000 votes), but had it not been for Jeremy Corbyn, it is entirely possible it could have been the Labour party I was applying to join at the time and not the Liberal Democrats.

Despite that, I thought I had finally found my political home in the Liberal Democrats. But the foundations have broken and that homeliness has long since given way to subsidence.

I have wrestled for months about my increasing disillusionment with the national party. Even after starting to write this article it has remained in draft form for weeks, while I found myself torn between staying loyal to a party which has drifted away from my values and being true to myself, as I have always sought to be. But with every passing day, either the party leadership or one of its MPs says something which makes me feel ever more distant, and I cannot stay silent any longer.

If the Liberal Democrats wish to spend their political capital campaigning for the wealthy, I wish them the best of luck. But I can no longer be a member of a party which promised constructive opposition but is instead behaving no differently than the Tories or Reform.

And so, last night, I resigned from the Liberal Democrats.

To the many friends I have made and colleagues I have worked with in the Liberal Democrats, particularly on the executive of LGBT+ Liberal Democrats: I wish you well. I can also only apologise for any disruption my departure may cause as the treasurer of Medway Liberal Democrats and Plus. They say that a good treasurer is hard to find, and it was those responsibilities which kept me hanging on for so long, but even for that I can no longer reconcile my disillusionment with a party which has drifted away from my values and into the arms of the wealthy.

Fixing the foundations

Against the backdrop of a difficult inheritance, the Labour government is doing its best to fix the foundations. Rachel Reeves’ budget wasn’t just the first to ever be delivered by a woman. It wasn’t just the first to be delivered by a Labour government in 14 years. It was the first since I became active in politics to give me hope for the future.

From renters’ rights to workers’ rights, Keir Starmer’s changed Labour party is getting on with the job of making the changes the country so desperately needs after 14 years of Tory failure. There is a tough road ahead, but the party has the right mix of experience and determination to succeed.

I am equally impressed by the way Naushabah Khan, the new MP for Gillingham and Rainham, has got stuck in since being elected. Not only has she thrown herself at the housing, communities and local government committee (a brief she is extremely familiar with), she has taken up a seat on the committee examining the Renters’ Rights Bill and is holding regular street surgeries - advertised in advance. She is a breath of fresh air compared to her predecessor; someone who genuinely cares about her constituents and a real champion for the communities she represents.

When I was a child growing up in Gillingham in the 1990s, the Liberal Democrats ran Gillingham borough council. They were the second largest party on Medway council at its formation. But they have had no councillors since 2015 (a statistic unlikely to change anytime soon without some serious soul searching by some members of the local party) and have barely registered 5% of the vote in parliamentary elections for the past two cycles (when prior to the coalition they were consistently polling in double figures).

The Liberal Democrats have made a remarkable recovery on local authorities across the country, but that trend appears to have passed Medway by. It is clear that the only choice Medway has for political leadership and parliamentary representation is between the Tories and Labour. And with the election of Kemi Badenoch as leader of the Tories, it is more important than ever that progressives are realistic in their approach.

In my MP, Naushabah Khan, and her colleagues Lauren Edwards and Tristan Osborne, and the leader of Medway council, Vince Maple, and his cabinet, Labour has a team of community champions who care passionately about Medway and, despite the difficult circumstances they have inherited, are doing their best for the community. And in Keir Starmer, the country has a leader who is focused on bringing about the change the country needs - a refreshing contrast from 14 years of Tory chaos.

Locally and nationally, Labour are fixing the foundations, and I have no hesitation in supporting them in that difficult endeavour.