#HT26

There is an unprecedented political opportunity - they cannot afford to waste it. On the 11th February 2026, Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper announced a flagship plan to scrap the Treasury & the Department for Business and Trade, replacing them with a new ‘Department for Growth’ based in Birmingham. The proposal is meant to rejuvenate the United Kingdom’s ever-stagnant economic growth & productivity, and work towards devolving the British government from Whitehall.

Many people feel a rush of pride when they get promoted. It is the sort of moment you tell your family about with a smile and a slightly dramatic retelling of how indispensable you clearly are. Hard work rewarded. Effort recognised. A lovely, stable upward trajectory. But in politics, that story often looks very different for women. There is a concept known as the “glass cliff,” first identified by researchers at the University of Exeter.

Every day, before I head off to a lecture or some other extra-curricular activity, I check my phone, hoping to find some sort of refuge behind the blue light away from a hangover the previous night. The solace is short lived because as soon as doomscrolling sets in, I’m hit with three crises, four scandals, and some AI generated slop to finish it all off. So, by the time I’ve rolled out of bed and brushed my teeth, I’m already numb.

It is often said that the Liberal Democrat strategy in recent years has been to announce a host of small and largely incoherent policies designed to support local campaigns rather than represent a genuine plan for government. Cleaning up Britain’s waterways and holding sewage companies to account, for instance, plays well with ultra-local campaigns. As I rack my brain to recall other parts of the 2024 manifesto, I can see how there are similar effects for ‘fixing our social care sector’ and providing a ‘dedicated mental health professional in every secondary school’.

In politics, accountability is everything. If a politician does something bad, egregious, or downright woeful, we mustn’t ignore it. That’s not to say that we should sensationalise the misdemeanours of politicians or enjoy their errors and mistakes as entertainment. That would be silly. In fact, that would be dangerous. But it is difficult to deny that we need to highlight their errors, expose problems when they arise. For politicians to do well, they need to be kept on their toes.

Elections are central pillars of democracy. Citizens have the inalienable right to elect councillors, holding them to account if they fail to act in their interests. So, it is concerning to see so many local elections being postponed across England this year. The deferral of elections stems from the reorganisation of local authorities into a series of unitary ones, starting from 2027. These changes aim to improve local democracy: representing citizens better and improving the efficiency of local services.

For a society whose sole ideological commitment is to liberalism and is affiliated with a liberal political party, I must say that we spend far less time that we ought to on articulating what this particular term actually means in practice. I assume most of you will have a general idea of what liberalism broadly encompasses: liberty, personal freedoms, rights, private property, open and democratic institutions, government accountability, free and fair elections, etc.