Opportunity comes in many forms, as nicely captured in the accidentally well-timed new cartoon from one of my favourite comics, Grant Snider: For the Liberal Democrats, opportunity (and over 4,000 new members) comes in the heart-wrenching form of the European referendum defeat.
Vote Leave seem to have ridden a tide of resentment to a narrow referendum majority, and immediately had to start admitting to lying in their campaign. The lies were impressive and, combined with the idea that experts are not to be trusted, were irrefutable. They played on the fears and anxieties of people who already felt left behind. They spoke to people struggling from years of austerity and feeling ignored by "elites". What happens to these people as they realise they were taken for a ride by a faction of that "elite" that played on their vulnerability? What is happening to people who voted Leave because they wanted change, and are increasingly horrified to find out what that change looks like, or voted out of protest and discover that their vote has consequences?
Do not support the 48% who voted remain; support the 100% who have the same values as we do. Liberal - Willing to respect, accept behaviour or opinions different from your own; open to new ideas
Despite residents, campaigners and councillors from Folkestone and Sandgate insisting that for the new Shorncliffe development to go ahead required a widened road bridge at Horn Street, Shepway Development Control decided... against making that a condition on the developer.
The UK has followed Ireland, France and the Netherlands in rejecting the EU in a referendum. As in those countries, the result was unexpected, the government unprepared and the situation unresolved by the outcome. Overall, 51.9% voted to leave the EU and 48.1% voted to remain. But in hardly a single community was that the actual result. In most communities two thirds voted one way and one third the other in a ballot which ripped Britain limb from limb. As was said with grim humour when Wales defeated Northern Ireland 1-0 in the European football championship on Saturday, 'this is the second time in three days that Wales has knocked Northern Ireland out of Europe'.
£350 million per week equals over £18 billion a year. That's is a massive spending commitment for the NHS and is far more than will actually be saved by Britain leaving the EU.