r/LibDem

Wera Hobhouse is the Liberal Democrat MP for Bath

Abortion has always involved deeply-held personal, ethical and religious beliefs. But for decades there has been a broad political consensus in the UK that decisions about pregnancy belong to women, their families and their healthcare providers, not politicians looking for a new culture war battleground. That non-partisan consensus is now under pressure.

Recent reporting has revealed a growing effort by Reform UK figures, anti-abortion campaigners and far-right activists to make abortion a new frontier in Britain’s culture wars. The language is becoming increasingly familiar: inflammatory rhetoric, misinformation, moral panic and attempts to portray established reproductive rights as somehow radical or extreme.

We should not dismiss this as political noise. Many people look at what has happened in the United States and assume it could never happen here.

They point to our different political traditions and our strong public support for abortion rights.

But rights are rarely lost overnight. More often, they are gradually politicised before they are challenged.

The rollback of abortion rights in America did not begin with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It began years earlier, with a deliberate effort to make reproductive rights a political dividing line. Issues that had previously been treated as matters of healthcare or personal opinion became tools in a broader political ideological campaign. That should serve as a warning.

Only recently, Parliament voted overwhelmingly to decriminalise abortion for women in England and Wales – the biggest step forward for reproductive rights in six decades. I was proud to support that change. The reform was not about expanding access to abortion or changing time limits, it simply recognised that women should not face criminal investigation, prosecution or imprisonment because of circumstances surrounding their own pregnancies.

Since 2020, around 100 women have been investigated by police following pregnancy loss or suspected abortion offences. Some investigations involved women who had suffered miscarriages. Six women faced court proceedings and one woman was imprisoned under legislation rooted in the Victorian-era Offences Against the Person Act 1861. No woman experiencing pregnancy loss should have to fear becoming the subject of a traumatic criminal investigation.

Yet even before decriminalisation has had time to take effect, there are already calls from some Reform UK figures and their allies to reverse it.

What worries me is not simply disagreement over policy – healthy democracies will always contain disagreement – it is the deliberate attempt to import the tactics and language of America’s abortion wars into British politics.

Open Democracy reported that the UK arm of The Alliance Defending Freedom, an organisation closely associated with anti-abortion campaigning in the United States, has received more than £2 million in funding from its American parent organisation while campaigning against abortion clinic safe access zones.

Its analysis also found a significant increase in abortion-related content among Reform-linked and far-right social media accounts over the past two years. These posts generated hundreds of thousands of interactions and frequently relied on inflammatory language designed to provoke outrage rather than inform debate.

The objective is not simply to oppose abortion, it is to make reproductive freedom politically toxic again... (continued)

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Has there been any attempt to table a debate + vote for EDM 240?

Is there any parliamentary action taking place to scupper the Supreme Court/EHRC guidance

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Here, I have often asked why the Liberal Democrats fail to emphasise economic democracy as a bulwark against political polarisation, which I believe stems from the lack of civic participation. Having greater say in workplaces will allow employees to have more control over their lives and in its essence, it is a liberal case. On economics, liberalism should not just be confined to 'free markets,' which often has excused growing monopolisation and the entrenchment of corporate power structures that often limit their workers' sense of freedom, such as obvious culprits like Amazon. Liberalism is in-fact incomplete if workers have no say in how their companies are run.

The early economic liberals like Adam Smith actually framed markets as a tool to end state-sponsored monopoly and protection, not as an end in itself, which makes it ironic that contemporary 'free market' liberalism often tolerates exactly the kind of concentrated private power its founders opposed.

Academic work on liberal-egalitarian routes to economic democracy argues this isn't a departure from liberalism but a fuller application of it, since a liberal commitment to non-domination logically extends into economic relationships, not just sociopolitical ones.

Rather than Labour's statism and the Conservatives' market fundamentalism, we could offer a genuinely liberal approach and this could be our differentiation. Why should we not vouch for workers having a say on company boards, and having stakes in the businesses that they work for? This is distinguished from redistribution, which only corrects unfair outcomes after the fact through taxation and transfers, meaning it treats inequality as a downstream symptom rather than addressing its structural source. We must make the case for pre-distribution to prevent the unfair concentration of wealth and power.

The 2024 For a Fair Deal manifesto does include employee ownership provisions, giving workers at companies with over 250 employees the right to request shares held in trust, and pushing for reformed fiduciary duty rules so company purpose statements weigh employee welfare alongside shareholder returns. However, meat was pulled off the bone: the Autumn Conference in 2012 had a pretty fledged-out policy paper - this was when we were in government, and yet it got squashed as a lot of exciting liberal ideas did that period in an effort to please our coalition partners. This was only to the detriment of liberalism. There is hope that this time round, things could work out differently. It starts now if we want a more dynamic, productive economy, rather than one where power accumulates at the top, away from those who produce the economic value in the first place.

Our aim will be to make the case for economic democracy to once again be at the heart of party policy: co-operatives, mutuals, social enterprises, and employee ownership as economic models that are completely compatible with a more democratised capitalism than the relatively unfree one we have now.

We have designed it deliberately as a campaigning organisation rather than a discussion group. There is a defined first objective, which is to put forward a policy motion to federal conference, and create a membership structured around real contribution, whether that means taking on tasks in the active core or backing specific asks as a supporter.

If this speaks to you, you can sign-up through this form today!

If you work in the co-operative, mutual, social enterprise, or employee ownership sector, we would genuinely love to hear from you as your input is key to formulating refreshing, newer ideas. Our group name is an eponym; Jo Grimond was the Liberal leader from 1956 to 1967 whose economic vision was based on the power of co-operatives as 'socialism without the state.' This way, we are tapping into our heritage and intentionally reviving the civic liberalism he stood for seven decades ago. It is less about where has time gone, but more about where have we gone as liberals.

Looking forward to hearing from you, it is time to make a difference!

I have been reading Lib Dem Voice for years now, and I am really pleased that I have been able to contribute with my two pence. I recently joined the party out of the belief that it was best placed to provide answers to complex problems by thinking outside of the box, and as an evidence-based, centrist party, could provide our political culture with more grace, and listening to each other.

I wrote about how and why I feel that our liberal democracy is under attack by growing resentment and populism, even though populism could be beneficial for democracy as it can contribute to debate, making us realise that problems have been overlooked. I mentioned how we must expand democracy beyond the ballot box to ensure civic participation and belonging becomes the norm in our society.

I am incredibly appreciative of those who have spent a few minutes reading my article, your feedback means a lot to me. :)

I initially felt a bit of trepidation as it is ultimately getting yourself out there, but if you feel that you have ideas to share, do not refrain - it is of great value to discourse within the party!

I am interested to know what others think about this as my views are not ‘set in stone’: at this early stage, how could they be? However my initial response is that I would like the party to engage positively with the idea of ‘a more collaborative politics’ and try to make that work. The current adversarial point scoring is getting us nowhere - indeed worse than nowhere.

I also think we should engage positively with the devolution agenda, when it comes, but push for it to go further and work towards a more entrenched federal system. We can push harder on social care reform, electoral reform, the environment and public transport, co-operatives (including housing), closer links with Europe, etc., all from the standpoint of constructive engagement and constructive criticism rather than carping, cynicism and doomsaying.

To sum up: a positive but critically engaged approach would be preferable to opposition for its own sake: we should save the opposition for when it is really needed. If - big if, I know - Burnham manages to address the concerns of left behind voters and lance the hideous boils of right wing populism and Reform UK, that is to be welcomed unequivocally.

As I said, my views are not ‘fixed’ and I am interested in the thoughts of others.

Hi, long-time lurker. On the trans UK subreddit (not linking as I don't mean to brigade) someone has shared a letter from their MP Paul Kohler for Wimbledon basically dismissing all of the fears trans people have about the updated EHRC draft guidance that essentially amounts to "Trans women must not use the women's toilets, and trans men must not use any toilets". And after dismissing these fears, he offers a vigorous endorsement of the internationally-derided Cass review that banned lifesaving medication for trans youth.

Can anyone share any more insight here? This isn't what I expect from the Lib Dems :(

The Liberal Democrats are missing an opportunity to lead the conversation on inequality.

One reason figures like Gary Stevenson have become so popular isn’t because people agree with all of his proposed solutions. It’s because he is articulating something millions of people feel: despite working hard, many households are stressed about money and feel that they are falling behind while wealth becomes increasingly concentrated. The cost of living crisis is real. Inequality is getting more extreme. This is bad.

Too often the political response is to dismiss any discussion of taxing wealth as unrealistic. Or worse, taxing wealth is caricatured as an attempt to replace income tax altogether. That is not what many people are actually arguing for.

The real concern is whether our economy has developed mechanisms that allow wealth to compound much faster than earned income. If that’s true, then inequality will continue to widen, even when people are working, paying tax and doing “the right thing”.

And here’s the thing - this is an area where the Liberal Democrats should be far more confident. 

Our tradition has never been about opposing markets. It’s about ensuring markets remain competitive, opportunity is widely shared, and concentrations of economic power don’t undermine liberty or social mobility.

We believe that while capitalism is good, unconstrained capitalism is disastrous. We believe that there is a role for the state in regulating markets to ensure delivery of outcomes that an unconstrained capitalist economy would not. Economic liberalism with social and democratic accountability. 

That suggests there should be room for a serious discussion about policies such as land value taxation, reforming the taxation of economic rents, improving competition policy, and shifting taxation away from productive work where possible.

We should be engaging with people who have succeeded in putting inequality back into mainstream political discussion, and then explaining why Lib Dem solutions might be more effective than unrealistic ideals or heavy-handed state interventions.

Instead, we fall into the same trap as the rest of those in the political bubble. We dismiss the conversation altogether, leaving the political space to populists who are very good at exploiting frustration (even if they are much weaker at offering credible solutions). When we dismiss these conversations people feel like we’re dismissing their struggles. Dismissing the lived reality of the majority of people.

Tackling inequality isn’t about redistributing wealth. It’s about slowing down the concentration of economic power. It isn’t about taking from the rich to give to the poor. It’s about encouraging productive investment over passive rent extraction. It’s about preserving genuine equality of opportunity.

I’m a Lib Dem because I believe in our fundamental values. I have high confidence in our political philosophy. I also feel that Ed Davy has intellectual weight and policy credibility. 

Gary Stevenson invited politicians to engage with him publicly. How great would it be for Ed Davy to meet with him publicly and say “you’re right, inequality and the cost of living crisis is bad, and he’s what we propose to do about it”.