Love and Liberty

I’ll vote this weekend, but I’m ever-more convinced that it’ll be a tight and far from whole-hearted decision. After spending a night at the London hustings (with the most entertaining hair, from dashing between shops in heavy rain despite chronic impending water shortages) I was resolutely un-struck by the ‘blimey, he’s fantastic’ thunderbolt I yearned for. No surprises from the candidates: Simon the most charismatic but with dodgy material; Ming authoritative but with a nasty edge; Chris talking much sense but still boring. This is the most detailed report you’ll read. Yet I feel strangely hopeful – each was far better than on Question Time, so they’re all improving even after a month of slog. Despite my reservations, I can be enthusiastic about whichever of them wins.

I may have one more leadership piece to go (been up my sleeve to finish with for a while), but with several papers and the BBC covering the London hustings, why shouldn’t I, too? It was great to see so many people packing out a large hall, and gratifying to see the likes of Nick Robinson hanging about, or Michael White and his Guardian munchkins telling on the doorstep, and all hosted by the Independent. Yes, we all say the media aren’t important, but we like it when they pay attention, don’t we? Independent editor Simon Kelner usually comes across as rather pro-Lib Dem and gave a friendly introduction, making it rather a shame that he left the chairing to his apparatchik Steve Richards, a man who usually comes over a spiteful Labourite and, though you might think that would give him an edge, was one of the least useful ‘question time’ chairs I’ve seen.

But I’m getting ahead. Large tables outside the hall advertised each of the candidates; we got there early, which exaggerated the differences between them. Simon’s table had a couple of people on it and a close-written, FOCUS-type leaflet; Ming’s table looked impressive from a distance, with masses of coloured balloons and stickers, but no leaflets and no people; and Chris’ table had plenty of people to speak to and six different types of leaflet or pamphlet. Before the hustings started, all had been joined by more ‘team members’, mostly young, with Simon’s table supplemented by a nicely-printed A4 Manifesto and Ming’s by, finally, a single variety of leaflet, albeit London-specific and in glossy colour. All saw good business in handing out stickers, though no candidate was wildly ahead on that score (and the people wearing all three who presumably wanted to suggest party unity merely looked like traffic lights). In the absence of popcorn, I’d brought along a large bag of M & Ms…

Ming’s Speech

With each candidate given ten minutes to sell their message, Ming spoke first. His best points were on his own ‘story’, and on the attack: his tone of incisive moral rectitude really gives oomph to lines like “Who could have imagined that the opponents of apartheid should now become the apologists for rendition here in the UK?” and accusing Labour of providing “the most authoritarian government since 1945”. That magisterial line of criticism had me nodding, but rarely uplifted, and talking of how we were “unanimous on Iraq” called attention to the way he was the candidate now most apart from the others on that very subject; he was much less strong when being positive, and punctuated too many of his points with a finger stabbing downwards, as if on a firing button.

Chris’ Speech

Chris called everyone “friends” and started by making the audience feel good, with a joke about MPs helping out constituents with their tax credits and volunteering Willie Rennie to give advice to a Mr Brown of Dunfermline who’s got in a tangle over his, as well as promising that each of the three candidates will make a strong team with the members deciding the right mix. His own delivery was a strange mix of the most relaxed – mainly coming over in the chattier parts of his material – and the most nervous, with a few stumbles and noticeably reacting on the audience; when he was dry and there was no response, he just got drier, but he came alive when given applause. There were more ideas than in Ming’s speech, but less passion: when he talked about making the planet sustainable as “the pre-eminent issue,” or attacked the “Orwellian” Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill as “the Abolition of Parliament Bill,” I found myself swept along, but when he slipped into pieces of jargon such as “the social trends underpinning our growth” I’m not sure if my eyelids were fluttering or wincing.

Simon’s Speech

Simon pushed the lectern aside and took the mike in his hand with an aside about “being better without technology,” which got a Luddite laugh but not from me, and launched into what was easily the most charismatic speech, engaging with the audience in the manner of a revivalist preacher (though pretending to speak without notes meant it was much more obvious when, without a handy lectern, he had to peer fixedly down at the speech he’d stuck on the table. Write it on your hand, Simon). Like a preacher, his personal appeals came across as assuming we were all on his side anyway and merely needed to be roused rather than persuaded, with mixed results. His opening story about the Bermondsey journey was slightly thrown by Southwark-based protesters who shouted and, this being a Lib Dem gathering, were first listened to and then booed rather than arrested for terrorism. If anything, they got the audience more on Simon’s side by interrupting the smugger part of his speech and giving him the opportunity to suggest they ask questions in the Q&A stage with everyone else, which as they were clearly only interested in drowning Simon out and not in dialogue gave them nowhere to go except outside in a huff. Once back on track, Simon’s was the most uplifting speech and the most personal, constantly promising “If I am your Leader, I will…” He was clearly tilting at one section of the party, with some of his tacking to the ‘left’ hitting a persuasive moral tone – “We’re the fourth most successful country in the world, but I don’t think a lot of people notice it” – and others cheap shots, like the unsubtle “I promise you, there will be no move to the right if you elect me Leader of our party next week.”

Each of them, incidentally, found their own way to name-check Charles Kennedy.

Questions

I quite enjoyed each of the speeches, but the questions were a bit of a wash-out. I should declare an interest, in that before the hustings opened we were told to submit questions on pieces of paper and, having done so, none of mine were picked. The trouble is, given these, Steve Richards then took questions from the floor; given those, he decided he wasn’t interested in them either and tended to introduce his own half-way through a round instead, meaning we frequently heard answers to completely different questions for no apparent reason other than that the political commentator preferred to hear his own voice. With the first question from a UKIPper on which candidate would leave the EU (to laughter), we then got three questions put together from a Southwark councillor on trust, economic and social Liberalism, and coalitions. Bizarrely, having not stopped the guy for asking more than one question, Mr Richards went on to seek still more from the audience before letting the contenders start on the answers, and introduced his own on taxes after the first answer as well; no wonder there weren’t satisfactory answers to any of the six questions shoved together there in a lump. I have to admit, he may have gone on a bit, but the guy from Southwark put his finger on arguably the three most important questions and I was put out that they were lost in the mêlée.

Ming’s first block of answers was fairly nondescript, with “trust by example” and “read our preamble” to argue there’s no dichotomy between economic and social Liberalism, and repeating his formula from Question Time that we should never mention the words “Hung Parliament” (once again being the only person to use those words all evening). He then made rather a bad impression by looking ostentatiously bored while each of the others answered (while Chris politely clapped). Chris’ answer was largely on the tax question Mr Richards suddenly switched to, though he did manage to fight his way back to some of the questions from the floor; hearing him on possible ways better than the 50p rate to tax the wealthier, I have to admit that after years of Gordon Brown messing up pensions, saying we might scoop more out of them doesn’t inspire me. Still, on trust I think he’s right that we must be “absolutely honest on policy” – it’s the ‘costed manifesto’ approach that’s given us credibility in the last few elections. He was also strong on distinctiveness being vital for us, and it being “crucial we stay as an independent force,” rejecting the ‘project’ between Tony and Paddy. Simon led on trust, saying he didn’t deal well with his “most personal judgement” but that people can distinguish between that and his “political judgement” (it seems to have stopped being the ‘Leadership test’ he claimed just afterwards). He did make good points that we’re trusted on issues like the environment and civil liberties but not on those such as pensions, mortgages and security that people are more likely to vote on, and denied being in favour of “tax and spend”.

Student Fees

On top-up fees, all three were strongly committed to the party’s continuing opposition. Chris started and finished well, talking about the fall in university applications and ending with a rousing denunciation of the government, but in the middle went for an extended wander around ‘Crosslandite criticisms’ that rather lost me and, I suspect, everyone else. Simon answered succinctly and then popped in factoids on other aspects of education, which made sense, as well as appealing to the hall with a pledge that “party members decide policy and not the Leader”; this was such a shameless lunge for the audience’s g-spot that I feel bound to comment. I suspect both Simon and Chris are so committed to their own ideas that they’re likely to try and bounce the party (it’s certainly happened before with Simon). It’s just that Simon thinks we’d all agree with him anyway, and I wonder how he’d be if it turned out we didn’t vote the way he expects us to in Conference (compare “party members decide” with “I promise you, no move to the right”). Ming gave a textbook answer about Scotland, and how he – like the Cabinet – had enjoyed free education, wondering aloud where they’d all have got without it.

Swearing, Choice and Points of Contention

The next round asked for their reactions to the ludicrous fine for a teenager overheard swearing with friends, views on parental choice in education (from a former researcher for John Hemming, which got a laugh), economic and social Liberalism again, and what they disagreed on. Ming ignored the first question and leapt in on the last, identifying the “immensely complicated” issue of Iraq as the main difference. There must be no selection in education, he said, by Labour’s back door or the Conservatives’ front door. For me one of his most impressive answers was here as he dealt with Liberalism and public services with considerable passion and good soundbites: “I believe fervently in personal freedom… Local government must have the power to remain in provision of public services, not just commission. If a contract goes wrong, that means lots of money to expensive lawyers on the Strand. If local government goes wrong, you can kick them out.”

Simon agreed that Iraq was a difference, saying “We should honour what we said we’d do and leave after the elections.” Our reputation is soiled, he said, and I have to agree with him, with the evidence from Iraq pointing just that sorry way. However, his next argument was that we must “complete devolution properly” – which I heartily agree with – but through his utterly risible idea of ‘completing’ devolution by leaving it forever incomplete and turning Westminster into a two-tier Parliament. Sigh. He then got my back up further by saying he had a difference with Chris, that the £20 billion it would cost to take to lift minimum-wage earners out of income tax could be spent better – that bit’s perfectly arguable, keep reading – but after stating, properly, that this would be the equivalent of 4p on income tax, then directly stated that Chris would raise the money by increasing income tax by 4p and attacked him for proposing an income tax hike. Now, I know Simon’s not stupid, so as Chris has said throughout that he’d put the money on environmental taxes I can only conclude that this was a deliberate straw man. It was a lie, and I didn’t like it. Perhaps Simon didn’t want to weaken his own green credentials by attacking Chris’ actual position, but it was the single most off-putting thing any of the candidates said that night. Fortunately Simon then came back to attack the government for criminalising young people and said we should end summary justice on the streets, reminding me what’s good about him too.

Chris started off by referring back to his chairing of the Public Services Commission to show he wasn’t on one side or the other in the economic-social debate, which wasn’t very inspiring, and I got the feeling he was sticking to pre-prepared answers because he didn’t react to Simon’s distortion either. He got more into his stride by talking about giving local councils the power to experiment with ideas and providers and try new things, so they can be rewarded or booted out rather than just imposing the market on everything from above, and worried about ‘choice’ sometimes meaning the school chooses the pupil rather than the other way round, so the local authority must be “the ringmaster”. He too opposed summary fines. Things heated up when he turned to defence: if Chris is Simon’s main target, Ming and Chris are each other’s. His repeated phrase that in Iraq “we’re part of the problem, not part of the solution” may have become a cliché but I’m sure it’s right, and he went on to say that he agreed with the article Ming wrote last year that said we should set a deadline to pull out. Now, I heard Chris use this weeks ago, and I’m stunned that Ming’s still not got an answer to it other than pretty much ‘This man is dangerously imprudent and I’m going to hope you all forget I said exactly the same thing’. Perhaps encouraged by Ming’s apparent weakness here, Chris went further on defence by mocking the way British troops are still stationed in Germany to repel a Soviet invasion, leading Ming actually to come in again and bat him down, pointing out not just that unilaterally backing out of NATO decisions would be irresponsible but that they’re there to reinforce Bosnia and Kosovo. So on defence each of them is clearly better when on the attack :-)

How Not to Answer a Light-Hearted Question

Then the final, ‘light’ question, “You’ve spent lots of time in each other’s company. What have you learned?” Now, you’d expect something light and witty to make the audience go away thinking well of you, or something clever along the lines of “I’ve learnt that Ming is authoritative / Simon is charismatic / Chris is clever” – praise for some opponent’s quality that everyone already knows – “but that what I can bring to this job still more effectively is…” Instead, two were nasty and one was tedious. Give me strength. Simon Hughes, come on down: “Not a lot.” (audible gasps) “You’re asking for candid answers.” “Is that a compliment?” asks Steve Richards. “You can interpret it as you wish.” Realising this may not have gone down well, Simon then says he knows why they’re all in the same party, raising for a second the tantalising hope he’s about to say something feel-good, before praising himself as the candidate who can win people over in large numbers better. Ugh. As if for a bet, Ming tries to be even less appealing. The man whose ostentatious proclamations of humility ring as true as Uriah Heep’s gives a scornful whiplash of “I’ve learned modesty and humility. And I’ve also learned from Simon how not to answer the bloody question.” Followed by Chris talking about attendance, good heart, united more than divides us, not riven, most united in Parliament on votes… Fortunately at this point he didn’t produce a bar chart, but he could scarcely have been less exciting. All of them had done pretty well for most of the night, so what ever possessed them each to give by a long way their poorest answers at the end, so people would be talking about the bad bits at the door? Perhaps they were demob-happy.

Despite the ending, I enjoyed the night. I chatted to lots of lovely Lib Dems I’ve not seen for a while (and particular thanks to the one who remembered seeing The Curse of Fenric many years ago and enjoyed being reminded of it by my review). And though each of the candidates had their problems, each was much better than on their TV and radio appearances together earlier in the campaign, suggesting each improves with practice. Simon was more at ease and able to let his charisma flow, and fired off fewer – if not no – loose cannon shots, a relief after the Leaders’ Question Time where I thought he easily ‘won’ the first half but then messily self-destructed in the second. Ming sounded more incisive and really impressed on the attack, and has at least improved his answers on coalitions and Iraq, the two issues where his judgement seemed most wanting back on Question Time. And Chris is still intelligent and has the most ‘meat’, but has cured himself of smiling smugly every time he makes what he thinks is a good point, though he’s still the least exciting presence of the three. I remain a little sad that no one of them gave me a sudden epiphany, and a bit disturbed that our big unifying factor of Iraq has become the big row. Whoever wins, I hope the other two and their supporters will genuinely rally round and unite the party, rather than just looking to their own backers. The party needs uniting, and with each of the contenders so clearly in possession of qualities the others lack, I do hope each of them is going to be pushed to the front to take the fight out where it matters.

Labels: Leaders' Debate, Liberal Democrats