Love and Liberty

Liberal Democrat members have attacked the proposed Migration paper A Fair Deal for Everyone for reasons ranging from fairness, to morality, to family, to economics. But for a political party, it has another fatal flaw. Its well-meaning, wishful-thinking naivety is just terrible politics. It’s time to get politically streetwise with a bit of hard-headed realism. Let’s ask the tough questions, get back to evidence-based policy and demand better.

Meaning Well and Wishing Are Not Enough

I’m sure the people who wrote the proposed paper for debate at Lib Dem Conference and its defenders mean well. I know and respect quite a few of them. And I can see how they got themselves into this mess. Two of the deepest Lib Dem instincts might be put simply as ‘Stand up to bullies’ and ‘Why can’t everyone get along?’ And most of the time those go hand in hand. But at times like these, when the country’s split, hate’s on the rise and things seem to be going horribly wrong, cracks can appear between the two. The proposed Migration paper feels upset at how nasty things have got – and I feel the hurt of that too – and wishes, really hard, that everyone would be nice to each other again. ‘Why can’t everyone get along?’ And so it compromises: a bit for immigrants; a bit for people who hate them and want them all gone. But in the real world, wishing doesn’t cut it, and there comes a time when you have to choose standing up to bullies instead of hoping they’ll turn nice if you only half-encourage them.

In thirty years of the Liberal Democrats, there can’t have been many more wince-inducing juxtapositions than one month ago. On August 14th, Lib Dem Leader Vince Cable said unequivocally that, hard as it might be, there was no room for racism in the Lib Dems. On August 15th, Lord William Wallace – a peer I have a lot of time for and usually agree with – gave an apologetic defence of the proposed Migration paper by saying that we have to pander a bit to racists otherwise they won’t vote for us (I paraphrase, but not unfairly).

The proposed Migration paper has the point of view that policy and the British polity should be kinder and gentler, wishing that people were nice, assuming everyone means well deep down and really agrees with us, and if they don’t yet then compromises in good faith will help them agree with us, and if nothing else maybe they’d vote for us after we tell them we agree with them, really, just a bit, and please, please, don’t hurt us. I can empathise. The problem is that the evidence supports none of it. I believe the Lib Dems backing these proposals mean well. But I’m realistic enough to know that not everyone else means well, and that wishing won’t make it so. The fight to make Britain better can be won. But it will take a fight, and if Liberals don’t put up a fight, who will? It won’t be won by acting as if we’re non-combatants who won’t take our own side in a quarrel, saying, ‘If you don’t want immigrants then you have a point’.

I don’t want to take this unduly personally, but when the proposed Migration paper puts forward a well-meaning compromise and I realise, ‘I’m the son of an immigrant and had this proposed Lib Dem policy been around when my parents met I’d never have been born’, it loses its appeal. That’s the trouble with compromising between haters and the people they hate; it always makes things worse for the ones who are already getting all the flak, but never goes far enough to satisfy those who want them gone. The proposed Migration paper proposes as a moderate compromise that I shouldn’t exist. What would I have left to give on the next compromise?

Stop wishing. Look at the evidence. Ask the difficult questions.

Look back ten, twenty, thirty years: the attitudes and policies and hostile environment against immigrants that are now ‘mainstream’ were confined to a few vicious hatemongers like the British National Party and then UKIP. How did we get here?

Has compromising bit by bit to defuse racists worked? Has mainstream politicians talking about ‘valid concerns’ increased harmony? Has fanning flames extinguished them? Has encouraging xenophobia quietened it? Has being too scared to confront lies made the truth more widely known?

I don’t blame people for thinking, once – maybe if we give a little we can avoid something worse. I do blame people who still stick to that hope when it has been tried over and over again and every time, the bigots have grown and strengthened as a result. Hostile immigration policy – hate crimes – Brexit – all these were unimaginable ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Compromising a little at a time has never stopped at a little. It didn’t work. That is the evidence. That is the unhappy fact. As the saying goes, one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. The ‘wishing’ approach of the proposed Migration paper has been tested to destruction.

Pandering to racists only increases racism. Saying ‘I share your valid concerns’ doesn’t win hearts and minds – it just makes people in the middle say, ‘Well, if even the Liberals say immigrants are bad…’ while hardcore racists think we’re just mealy-mouthed politicians out to con them. And saying out loud – the shocking naivety! – that we have to pander to racists not because we actually agree with them but just to make them vote for us, so we’ll campaign on a promise that although we want to make things nicer for immigrants, because we recognise their ‘valid concerns’, we wouldn’t make things as nice as all that? That’s just treating voters as idiots.

Since the Brexit Referendum there’s been more hard polling evidence than ever before in British history on how social attitudes break around votes for parties. About 90% of the Lib Dem vote comes from people who also voted Remain. Voters who hate immigrants as their top issue? That’s UKIP’s big thing. That’s Theresa May’s big thing. That’s even Jeremy Corbyn’s big thing. Why on Earth would Lib Dems propose a Migration paper in the hope of appeasing appealing to such a crowded marketplace as what will only ever be the fourth choice of authoritarian racists? Let’s make an evidence-based call here: stop asking, ‘How do we get racists to vote for us?’ Because they won’t anyway.

Look at Labour’s record. Gordon Brown in 2010 trying to recover from “I agree with Nick” in the first debate by monstering him over immigration in the second and third (the third Leaders’ Debate was the one in which an audience member said “We’re not allowed to talk about immigration,” despite it being the only issue bar the economy featured in every debate, because hardcore racists are impossible to satisfy or to shake from their lies). Yvette Cooper attacked the Coalition from the right for not being tough enough on immigrants. Ed Miliband put immigrant-bashing on a mug. Brexit-backer Jeremy Corbyn tells lies about foreign workers stealing British jobs. Do Labour get ‘credit’ for being tough on immigration? No. Racist voters still think they’re too soft. Because there are always other parties that will go harder right to compete.

When I campaign, I try for every vote. If someone disagrees with us on immigration, they might still respect us locally for getting their potholes fixed. But if the economic and moral and principled case for a powerfully Liberal migration policy doesn’t persuade you, here’s the naked political calculation. We’re on 11% in the polls (at best). We’re not chasing an immediate 500-seat landslide. So to build up our vote, does it make more sense to make policy that’s weaselly and indistinct in the vain hope that’ll attract the people who are least likely to vote for us, when they can get red meat from several other parties? Or should we put our effort into attracting people who already agree with our values into voting for us?

It’s worth reading Andrew Hickey’s The Howard Rule – in which he proposes testing Lib Dem policy against Michael Howard’s once-infamous authoritarianism as Home Secretary – not just as a statement of principle, but as a reminder of just how far right all political parties have shifted in the last quarter-century. In the 1990s, he was appalling. Present his immigration regime today and it would scare the horses with its liberal openness.

Taking A Stand

We must do better than the proposed Migration paper. We can do better by demanding better of ourselves again.

One of my defining early political experiences was Paddy Ashdown leading the newly formed Liberal Democrats alone in standing up for the rights of Hong Kong British citizens. You might think struggling on a good day to hit 11% in the polls puts our party in the doldrums now, but back in 1989 a good day was hitting half that and the sheer relief of getting beyond the margin of error of nothing in the opinion polls. Standing up for a liberal immigration policy then let us hold our heads up. Margaret Thatcher’s Government steered the familiar Tory course of nationalism tempered by greed: standing by Britain’s promises to only the richest, offering citizenship by bribery. Norman Tebbit led a Tory rebellion against Mrs Thatcher to stop anyone with the wrong colour skin entering Britain, and the Labour Party piously opposed the idea of citizenship for the rich – then voted with Mr Tebbit’s Tory far right to stop anyone being let in at all. Mr Corbyn takes the same faux-ethical stance of economic populism as cover for immigrant-bashing today.

In April 2000, during a hard-fought by-election campaign where the Liberal Democrats were striving to take ultra-Tory Romsey, Charles Kennedy took on the immigrant-bashing Conservative campaign head-on. The Lib Dem campaign could have played down our Liberalism, played it safe, stuck to ‘popular’ issues and only challenged the Tories where they were perceived as electorally ‘weak’. Instead, the Lib Dem Leader took the huge risk of facing down the Conservatives’ asylum policy, in a speech in Romsey, where conventional wisdom was that saying the right thing would lose us the seat. We didn’t cower. We won. Charles said afterwards:

“The voters of Romsey were not beguiled by William Hague’s personal brand of politics – those based on fear and division… By concentrating on the negative, and pandering to the small-minded, he insulted the electorate.”

Standing up for our principles heartens, rallies and recruits the people that none of the anti-immigrant parties can reach. And making the case instead of letting it go by default changes minds. We can persuade by telling it as it is – not by pretending and pre-compromising. How do we make racism less bad? Not by saying it’s right. Why can’t we all get along? Because some people don’t want to. Someone has to confront hate, say why it’s wrong, and don’t say they have a point when they don’t. But it’s not just about standing up to hate: it’s appealing to the better instincts of people for whom it’s complicated. Whose fears have been stoked by the Daily Hate, but who like their neighbours and were appalled by Theresa May over Windrush.

Liberal Democrats must make the case for immigration and for immigrants – because it’s right, because it’s the only way to turn back the poison, and because no-one else will. Immigration is good for the economy. But it’s not all about the money. Immigrants are the lifeblood of the NHS. But it’s not all about the work we get from them. Families should be able to be together because love is more important than money. Tabloids screaming lies about “open door” immigration, when it’s way tougher than anyone believes, has led to families being torn apart, but still most people think if you marry an immigrant they can stay. That would be a Liberal immigration policy. That’s the sort of appeal Lib Dems should make – not the proposed Migration paper keeping a price on family life.

Demand Better

Remember – these are only proposals to be debated and decided at Conference. It is not A Fair Deal. For Liberal Democrats, it is not a done deal.

Be politically streetwise. Look at the evidence. Tell the truth. Don’t pander to racism and don’t settle for wishful thinking that has been proven year after year only makes things worse. Vote to send the proposed Migration paper back so the Liberal Democrats can offer – can demand – something better.


This is a slightly longer version of my article published on Liberal Democrat Voice earlier today. I recommend going there to read Caron Lindsay’s The paper on migration, even amended, is not good enough. Her piece is brilliant, speaks from the heart on how to persuade people, and scathingly dissects the paper in detail.

Labels: Bigotry, Brexit, Charles Kennedy, Conservatives, Immigration, Labour, Liberal Democrat Conferences, Liberal Democrats, Paddy Ashdown, Vince Cable

There’s one sort-of political anecdote that I’ve never written about until now. It involves a total cringe from my point of view, but it’s about someone who was an excited fan of Charles Kennedy, so this seems like the right time to tell it (if I ever should). I gave some of my own memories of Charles yesterday, and concluded by mentioning that he was a huge David Bowie fan… So I don’t know whether Charles would have appreciated this one. But here goes.

Back in the late ’80s, I was an awkward teenager coming out with the help of Gay Youth Manchester (as was), and some of the friends I made there are still close today. One of them had got in touch with me again in the early 2000s, and after he’d come round to our place to watch Doctor Who with a few mates, he invited us to a party at his and his partner’s place.

I don’t really do socialising, still less glamorous London night-life. But it seemed my friend had done quite well for himself, as his rather nice Brick Lane flat was buzzing with rather a lot of rather glamorous and fashionable people. And me.

So I did what I usually do if I awkwardly find myself pressed into a party: hover by the buffet inhaling all the food, and hold even more firmly to Richard than to the sausage rolls.

Eventually, though, someone else came up to the buffet, said “Excuse me” to the nervous man hogging it, and politely struck up a bit more of a conversation, and he was reassuringly dowdy, so I came out of my shell a bit. And as we chatted, the inevitable “And what do you do?” sort of question came up.

At the time – as usual – my health was a bit dodgy, in the early part of its long slide ever since, so I wasn’t working. But back then, I was still up to being more active in the Lib Dems, so I tentatively started off on some of my political involvement, and that I was on a party’s policy committee. With encouraging noises from the other guest, I expanded on that to say which party, and that I was then Vice-Chair of the Federal Policy Committee, where Charles was the Chair and I’d sometimes take over when he was at other meetings.

And this guy was impressed. Really impressed. It turned out he was a huge admirer of Charles Kennedy, and thrilled that I knew him, as he went on and on. Oh, just a bit, I said, self-deprecating in the way that only someone terribly flattered by reflected glory and unable to see the mortifying fall looming in front of him could be.

“And what do you do?”

I asked, from my unexpected height of social superiority.

“Oh – I play bass in a band called Radiohead.”

Labels: Charles Kennedy, Music, Personal

I heard at 7am the news that Charles Kennedy had died. It feels so terribly unfair. He had so many gifts and should have had so much more to give with them. And just as Liberal Democrats are starting to recover from the grief of the election, and find something to celebrate in such unlooked-for growth in our numbers (from 45,000 members to 60,000 since polling day), our family is plunged into the most appalling shared grief of all. My heart goes out to Charles’ immediate family too. I knew Charles as Leader, much less since, but I’ll miss him.

Like many Lib Dems, I started the day by pouring out some of my grief on Twitter and a comment on Lib Dem Voice – then a short piece on my Tumblr, which is where, essentially, I write and publish things quickly, before there’s time for insecurity to stop me writing. But I’ve decided that Charles deserves a proper thank you and memorial from me, too, which in my typical way means much the same I said earlier, but at significantly greater length.

A Great Communicator (but not in every way)

You’ll have read a great many tributes and obituaries. Like all Leaders, he had his good and his bad points – perhaps more of both than most. Charles’ greatest strength was that he came across as genuine, and decent, and more like an ordinary bloke than other politicians: today British politics has to make do with Nigel Farage, his anti-matter duplicate. Getting to know Charles over half a dozen years or so, as I’ll come to, he always struck me as the same in private as he was in public, and in private, too, he rarely let people see his bad days.

The one thing I’ll say that contradicts most of the pieces I’ve seen about Charles today is that I don’t think he was a great orator. He was a great communicator – probably the best the Liberal Democrats have had, though I reckon we’ve been blessed with three. But his greatest gift was in speaking directly, conversationally, not reading lines from a platform. I don’t mean he couldn’t deliver a speech – he could, and I saw many of them. Some stuck in my head for his principles as a call to action; some inspired me by turning those principles into a brave challenge. But platform oratory wasn’t his best platform, and if you want to read a review of one of his speeches with a favourable view of the content and a not entirely complimentary look at some of his vocal tics, I wrote one quite some years ago and still think I was right. That doesn’t matter.

I think it may well have been on introducing Charles for the first of the three speeches I mentioned above that a Lib Dem MP said something rather indiscreet that stuck in my head as much as the speech itself. Charles was relatively new in the job of Leader, and there was a wide assumption (not necessarily a fact) that he’d been more the choice of the armchair members than the activists – but also, by this stage, a widespread feeling of pleasant surprise that he’d made himself both a more explicitly Liberal leader and more distanced from the Labour Party than anyone had expected before his election (I remember one of his initial backers telling me sourly that I was probably more pleased with his victorious candidate than he was, and happily agreeing). So when Charles was introduced for his own Leader’s Speech with “I didn’t vote for him – but I’m ever so glad he won!” there was both a huge laugh and a sense from many, myself included, that we would have said the same if we’d been daring enough.

My Memories of Charles (and the Reverse Aesop)

I got to know Charles mainly on the Lib Dem Federal Policy Committee. I was an elected member throughout his Leadership, and for four years I was a Vice-Chair to Charles as Chair. He was the same in private party meetings as he was on the telly: a big change from Paddy Ashdown’s fight to the death on every issue – bringing people together, but passionate on the issues he really cared about. The converse was also true; the chance of my taking over the Chair for an hour when Charles suddenly discovered he had another urgent Commons appointment rose in direct proportion to the time FPC members spent droning on multiplied by the lack of interest he had in the subject. His slipping out rarely helped meetings to finish on time, as he was far more skilled in finding kindly ways to shut people up when they were blathering on than I ever was.

I used to joke at the time that in choosing Charles to succeed Paddy the party had done a reverse Aesop – calling for King Log after King Stork. That was a little unfair (to Charles, at least). He may not have wanted pitched battles on every line of policy, but I remember him usually making two different sorts of crucial contribution across the board. One was in spotting when policy was getting either too impenetrable or too up itself (not that he’d use those terms). In particular, he had a keen eye for the Lib Dem habit of setting up National Institutes for Well-Meaning Interference. Nobody else on the FPC was ever so good at puncturing pompous proposals, rolling his eyes at yet another new bureaucracy: “No more capital letters, please!” Part of that was what you might call Charles ‘remembering common sense’. But there was another element in there. Whether it was being a Highlander, an outsider, his temperament or his chosen ideology, he quietly disliked people pushing other people around.

Growing Into a Liberal Leader

I didn’t know Charles well enough to be able to say whether it was out of that instinct, or his political judgement as Leader, or it simply seeming the obvious thing to do, but his other ‘big picture’ contribution was more blatantly ideological – under Charles, the Liberal Democrats started using the words “Liberal” and “Liberalism” in the headlines, not just in the small print. The Liberal Democrats never lost our Liberalism; when during the election I was searching for inspiring Liberal quotes, short and long, for my Liberal Democrats Believe Tumblr (which, like so many things, I must get back to), one of the most inspiring speeches and probably the one I quoted at greatest length was one of Paddy’s Leader’s speeches, which is as brilliant an exploration of philosophical Liberalism as you could hope to find. But you’d rarely find the word on its own on a policy paper front page or in a shorthand description of the party.

I suspect that a lot of this comes down to simple history: Paddy had been a Liberal MP, and as the Liberal Democrats’ Leader for our first decade, he was careful not to ‘unpick the merger’. And so was everyone else who’d gone through that shambles of a time. Under Charles, the party was more at ease with itself, with the passage of time and the passage of members. Quietly, we had a Leader who would say of us, “We’re a Liberal party,” without anyone being under the impression he was expelling former Social Democrats; policy papers on what we stood for started proclaiming “It’s About Freedom” or “Freedom in a Liberal Society”, rather than the party’s early years of “Our Different Vision”, which I remember reading cover to cover and still being unable to say quite what it was.

I joined the new party immediately after the merger in 1988, because I’d been a teenage supporter but didn’t see why there were two separate parties and waited until it was official to sign up. For me and my generation of Lib Dem Youth and Students, it was natural to be Liberal Democrats, happy with a party born out of a merger, not wanting to go back to the structures and strifes of a party we’d never been members of, but of course we were ideologically Liberals too. Older members found it more difficult to separate the history and the philosophy, so it was something a lot of Lib Dems were very quiet about during the ’90s. It was obvious to me that Bob Maclennan – a former Leader of the SDP – was by far our most Liberal Home Affairs Spokesperson of the time, and similarly, when Bob was Party President in the mid-’90s he was the most senior figure to speak of our Liberalism, unabashed, one of many reasons I became an unlikely fan and friend. No-one could accuse him of digging up old rivalries or a Liberal Party takeover, and the same was true when Charles, another former Social Democrat, was elected Leader. He was able to talk about what we all stood for without it being divisive. Under Charles’ Leadership, the Lib Dems started to grow our own distinct philosophical rivalries, today spoken of more along Social Liberal and Economic Liberal lines, though neither (with a few exceptions!) as sharp as between our two predecessor parties. Most Lib Dems are both Social and Economic Liberals, and those who come down much more heavily on one side than the other are just as likely to have come from the old SDP as the old Liberal Party – but, like the vast majority of Liberal Democrat members, are most likely not to have been a member of either party that voted to merge into the Lib Dems nearly three decades ago.

So every time a ‘political correspondent’ talks about the ‘fault lines in the Lib Dems’ being based on the Liberal Party vs the SDP, they are almost without exception talking bollocks – just as it would have been absurd to characterise every internal debate of the pre-1988 Liberal Party in terms of Whigs, Radicals and Peelites who merged to create the Liberals in their turn. We are not our parents, and neither are parties. Charles, in his calm and consensual but crucial way, helped the Liberal Democrats to grow up.

Charles’ Principles and Passions

The much less quiet decision that Charles took, after much internal debate and soul-searching, and which came to define his Leadership, was to oppose the Iraq War. It’s often falsely remembered as a populist move. It was nothing of the kind. It was a terrifying plunge into doing the right thing when nobody else would, and we were vilified for it. In the run-up to the War, there were mass marches in opposition, but not largely by natural Lib Dems, and the massed fire of the media was all against us. When the invasion began, our opinion poll support took a dive. It was only much later, when it became clear to people not that the principle of invading another country against international law was wrong – people knew that, and were gung-ho anyway – but that the Labour Party and the Republican Party had created such an appalling, bloody mess, that support swung back our way. Remember that the Labour Party and their Tory and press cheerleaders called Charles and the Lib Dems “Traitors” and much worse for not going along with their illegal war of aggression.

If Iraq was Charles Kennedy’s defining issue by circumstance and brave decision in a hard place, perhaps his greatest passion was Europe. A committed and persuasive European, internationalist, democrat and reformer, while Liberal Democrats and many others who simply liked and agreed with him will miss Charles for too many reasons to count, over the next couple of years our loss will be a huge loss in the coming referendum. As well as the personal loss for his family and our wider Lib Dem family, both bereaved, it’s tragic to lose his voice when he’s so needed.

“I am a Highlander, a Scot, proudly British, and European. I’m proud of all four of these things, and I don’t see why I should have to choose between them or delete any of them.”

You may well have seen today a letter from Charles replying to a voter with his judgement that, even though he’s blue, Gonzo’s a nice guy and his favourite Muppet. I can reveal that he rather liked Doctor Who, too, and that his favourite Doctor was always Patrick Troughton, so I’ve had the Mighty Trout’s most Liberal story on this afternoon. If you really want to celebrate one of Charles’ passions, though, put on some David Bowie to remember him by. There, he was a real fan.

Labels: Charles Kennedy, FPC, Iraq, Liberal Democrats, Liberalism, Obituary, Paddy Ashdown, Personal, Speeches, The Golden Dozen

With Ming’s speech all over today’s newspapers, I’m looking back in my usual up-to-the-minute way not at the current Liberal Democrat Leader but at two blasts from the past seen at Conference this week. Charles Kennedy made a much-publicised speech to the Conference on Tuesday afternoon setting out some key themes, but you could easily have missed a major speech by Paddy Ashdown at about, ah, 1am on Thursday morning at the ‘Glee Club’. Well, I say major speech. More of a shaggy dog story, really, but to an ecstatic reception. And no, he didn’t tell any jokes about Ming… And, oddly enough, neither of them really employed their best-known and most imitable speaking traits.

Charles Kennedy

Charles looked good coming on stage; if there’s one thing that’s a gift to those who want to use him as a stick with which to beat Ming (and he was ostentatiously supportive of Ming in his speech; you could almost hear the growls of disappointment from the assembled journalists) it’s that he looks much younger than his forty-odd, while Ming looks older than his sixty-odd. It was a pretty good speech, though for all that he’s been talked up as a great communicator, it certainly wasn’t a great one. Actually, I do think Charles is a great communicator, but he’s never been a great platform orator. Put him in a more relaxed, conversational environment and he’s brilliant, but I’ve never heard him give a speech to compare with the passion and rhetoric of Paddy Ashdown’s Leader’s speeches. Put Paddy in an informal setting that calls for him to be engaging, though, and he always seems a bit stiff and aloof. Well, except at 1am in the ‘Glee Club’. But it’s a very rare talent indeed who can be outstanding at every type of communication.

Charles’ speech, then, was pretty much as I expected, though as Millennium says, the surprise wasn’t any particular part of the content but that there added up to so much of it, speaking for double his allotted time. One unintentionally amusing moment came for light-watchers; at Lib Dem Conference everyone but the Leader gets a set length of time for their speech, with a light showing at the lectern and hanging from the ceiling for the audience to see. It starts off green, turns amber with a minute to go, then red to stop. If the red light actually starts flashing, you’re about to have your microphone switched off. On Tuesday, the amber light came on at 4pm, just as Charles was just to finish; by five past, with the former Leader still evidently with no intention of leaving the stage, the amber light winked plaintively out, and no light was shown until the next speaker was clear to start, twenty minutes later. Despite my jealousy at his ability to overrun time so drastically without being stopped, it really doesn’t seem worth all the bother he had to go through to get it.

Charles was a little hoarse, but still got a big laugh on John Prescott’s cowboy outfit, “Not so much John Wayne as Blazing Saddles,” and had a good, if meandering message. He touched on four key themes, social justice, democracy, climate change and internationalism, and outlined a small number of unfashionable issues on which the party should “keep the flame alive”. These all seem to have gone under the radar, but if there was a coded critique of party direction (including under his own Leadership), it was here. Regional government in England, largely abandoned by the party; pro-Europeanism; and not getting hung up on coalitions but fighting as an independent party (something on which all three contenders for the Leadership this year were much less clear than Charles) were all there, and all have the potential to come back as big ‘I told you so’ issues. Yes, it’s ironic, but while journalists and other professional gossips have spent the week watching every nod, wink and handshake to decipher what Charles thinks, I’ve not read a single analysis based on what he actually said. Charles is more engaging than passionate much of the time, but there were flashes when he really hit hard; he really isn’t a fan of the Labour Party. “Those who the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad… The gods must really have it in for Labour” was a jokey aside, but you got the feeling he meant it, particularly after tearing into the Labour Government for the damage it’s inflicted over Iraq on the integrity of our country and diplomacy: “It is absolutely damnable in my view. Damnable.”

Incidentally, I wonder why Liberal Democrat Voice is asking, “When would you like to see Charles Kennedy back on the Lib Dem front bench?” with poll options running in strict times from months, to years, to ‘Never’? Aside from rejecting the last one, it’s not my business to press him on any of those, and I’d object to anyone polling on my own long-term health problems. Surely the best answer would be “When he’s properly up to it again?”

Paddy Ashdown

True or not, Paddy and Charles rather than Charles and Ming seem to have been reported as the Leaders not really getting on this week. Whatever the business going on there, I thought both were brilliant Leaders, though neither were perfect (and please feel free to call a doctor should I ever lose my grip enough to say any Leader is perfect). Paddy, of course, gave up the Leadership of his own free will before most of the party wanted him to go, though there’d been a degree of tension about how close he was to Mr Blair; though I had a great many arguments with him, that was the only issue, a strategic rather than a policy issue, on which I thought he was really desperately wrong. You’d imagine those most wary of Paddy on that issue would be some of the instinctive, anti-authoritarian Liberals of the sort most likely to visit the Glee Club, and you’d probably be right. But the fact remains that when Paddy went back there for a turn the night before last, he went down a storm. For Lib Dems of my generation, there’s a piece of our heart that’s forever Paddy, and if the press had really wanted to see devotion to a returning former Leader, they shouldn’t have watched us clapping Charles but laughing with Paddy as we all decided all over again that we’d follow him into a ditch (again) if he asked us.

If you’ve not heard of it, the ‘Glee Club’ is an event that takes place on the last night of Conference, where comic songs and sketches are performed, often by MPs, but mainly where a large group of inebriated Liberal Democrats sing in turns inspiring, scandalous and comic songs from three centuries of Liberalism, all collected in the Liberator Songbook. Well, I say ‘sing’… It’s not something the control freaks in any other party would tolerate, and even for us it can be a little alarming if you’re not used to it. For me, one of the most entertaining moments of the night was not Evan Harris’ Woody Allen monologues – it was definitely not Evan Harris’ Woody Allen monologues – nor the song about Mark Oaten, but the sight of Stephen Tall gazing around in appalled horror as the last of his Conference virginity evaporated.

Paddy’s moment of glory came with a long, superbly delivered monologue – not quite as long as Charles’ speech, but it seemed at times like it could manage it – after a moving little tribute to the Glee Club’s revue star, Harriet Smith, whose funeral in the summer was the last occasion on which I was in Brighton. I can’t repeat Paddy’s shaggy dog story about the two tribes and the wizard; not because I don’t remember it (in fact, I remembered the punchline from when he used to tell it on turning up to the Glee Club as Leader, and many of the audience joined in on a lot of the lines), but because it involves such a multiplicity of ludicrous sound effects that I’d be unable to deliver it in person, let alone written down.

I know, you’re disappointed, aren’t you? After all that buildup? Well, even if you aren’t, I’m going to make up for the lack of shaggy dog with one of my favourite Paddy true stories that I probably shouldn’t repeat, but which I still repeated in the bar that night, with all my favourite Paddy mannerisms, without actually noticing how very little distance separated him from me. Fortunately, he didn’t hear, and so I survive to unwisely tell this tale of how our former Leader’s behaviour was subject to the ingestion of… Certain substances.

For more than a few years, I was on the Liberal Democrats’ Federal Policy Committee, and it was chaired by the Leader. Paddy and Charles had very different styles, though it’s a bit of an exaggeration to say we swapped King Stork for King Log. While Charles was laid-back and clever in the way he moved the meetings along, only occasionally steering on an issue about which he felt very strongly (and it was equally noticeable which policy issues he didn’t find completely enthralling), with Paddy the meetings were longer and harder because for Paddy, every single dot and comma was an issue of principle that must be fought to the death. I remember well the rather fraught atmosphere before the Conference in Brighton in 1994 at which we debated cannabis – the one at which Paddy strode off the stage in such a visible huff (though, I should point out, I just did lots of interviews on the subject but didn’t actually speak in the debate. So it wasn’t me). When Paddy got to the point of frustration that meant he took his glasses off, set them in front of him and started to tell us, “Colleagues… This used to be a good Committee to chair…” and then “I’ve thought about this for a long time,” the late, awesome Nancy Seear broke in with a stentorian bellow, “Not as long as some of us! I’ve been campaigning for the legalisation of cannabis since before you were born!”

You’ll have gathered that in those days, there was occasionally the merest hint of tension about Policy Committee meetings. I was, back then, the youngest person on the Committee by ten years, and I had a way to defuse the tension that I’d practised over years in the party’s Youth and Student wings. When things got a little fraught, I got out some sweets and passed them round (the only time Richard Holme ever spoke to me was when he was after my confectionery). Sometimes they were bonbons, sometimes chocolates, but for their disarming effect if not their taste I’d most frequently bring Love Hearts. It’s rather difficult to keep shouting at someone if you’ve just picked up something that says ‘HUG ME’. And the person on whom these had the most noticeable effect of all was Paddy. I never dared ask what the message he’d taken was, but a Love Heart was the one thing that could put him off his stride; he never failed to blush.

I wasn’t the only person who regularly brought sweets to the meetings; I was, however, the only one who regularly offered them round. A party official whose identity I shall for the moment protect (well, he likes Doctor Who too) would always sit next to Paddy and feed him jelly babies. One evening, I approached him conversationally at the end of the meeting and wondered just why I, with no money, should keep the meeting catered for while all he did was suck up to the Leader. He looked at me steadily and asked, “Have you never watched what happens?” So he explained, and next time I watched carefully.

Unlike many of us mortals, Paddy was supremely fit. He’d go to bed at two, do 500 press-ups, wake at five, do 500 press-ups, and if he felt his staff deserved a lie-in, he might not ring them until six. He believed breakfast, lunch and dinner were for wimps. So by the time a 6pm meeting started, his blood sugar would be very low and he could be more than a little irritable. But as more and more jelly babies entered his system…

…he literally became a sweeter person.

And that’s the story of how the former King of Bosnia used to be kept doped by jelly babies.

…And Those Famous Mannerisms

I mentioned yesterday that Ming, like Paddy and Charles, has immediately adopted one over-used and instantly imitable mannerism for his speeches. There wasn’t a lot of either in those by Paddy and Charles this week, strangely enough, but you’d know them if they did them. Charles always seemed someone that impressionists had difficulty with, and, true, a lot of politicians walk about the stage without a script in their hand, so you wouldn’t ‘get’ him just from that. But having listened to a lot of his speeches over the years, I can tell you one, one very distinctive vocal trait that at least regular Charles-watchers would recognise, that they would recognise, and that was a key reason why his Leader’s speeches would often go on a bit and drive his speechwriters to distraction. He would drive his speechwriters to distraction. And that, friends, is because when he wanted to make a point, not only would his delivery get slower and slower, but he would repeat his words for emphasis. He would repeat them for emphasis.

The most distinctive message in which to sum up Paddy’s speeches is, let me tell you this frankly, less in his words than in his other mannerisms, which is perhaps why so many impressionists got him spot on and even I was unwise enough to try him the other night. That clipped tone, so easy to imitate where Charles’ gentle accent is so tricky; the eyes incredibly narrowed, as if ready to focus lethal beams into the distance; and one hand, outstretched, upturned, as if reaching to hold some sacred flame or, as it was unkindly described, ‘the dead spider’. We may have taken the mickey out of both ex-Leaders, but the party still loves them both, and deservedly so.

And Ming’s mannerism? Ah, well. More on that story later, but I suspect you’ve spotted it already…

Labels: Charles Kennedy, FPC, Liberal Democrat Conferences, Liberal Democrats, Paddy Ashdown, Speeches

Surely what the bulk of Lib Dem members and supporters are thinking about the Leadership, along with ‘For goodness’ sake, why are they all being so beastly to each other?’ I’m at least reasonably familiar with each of the candidates, but I’m still unpersuaded – not least because despite their numerous advantages, none of them seem to hold a candle to Charles. So I’ve been working on some questions I’d like to see answered, and what each of them could do or say that might win my vote. I’ve no doubt each could be impressive, and I know that after preferring other candidates to Charles last time that I ended up not just pleasantly surprised by him but firmly convinced. So, let’s hope my worries about these three turn out just as wrong, and that the large numbers of people whose instincts I trust who are backing each of them turn out to be right.

In 1999, the two things that most made me concerned about Charles were that he seemed to be the candidate most likely to do deals with New Labour, and that despite having listened to many of his speeches, I had no idea what he stood for. Instead, he swiftly pulled the plug on the constitutional committee when it was plain Labour had no interest in listening to anyone else, and led the party in a plainly and outspokenly Liberal direction. I don't think we was a perfect leader; he often chose the wrong people, but I was very happy with his political instincts, both in public and in debates on the party Policy Committee. For exactly the reasons I warmed to Charles, many of his initial backers from the more conservative wing of the party never forgave him for turning out differently than they expected, and I’ve no doubt that had as much to do with the almost non-stop briefings against Charles in the last seven years as his drinking did. I still feel disgusted with the way our MPs behaved over Christmas, not least because so many of them running round in naked panic trying to crash the plane at the thought of a few weeks of good Tory publicity doesn’t bode well for their own leadership qualities. But that’s by-the-by.

Charles’ most appealing quality for me in 1999 was that he could appeal to people as something other than an ‘ordinary politician’; for a party that relies so much more on an anti-establishment appeal, that’s crucial. Back then, I backed Jackie Ballard, the only other candidate that I thought came across as similarly down-to-earth; today I worry that none of the three on offer have got it. Yes, Simon has anti-establishment instincts, but stick him on the telly and his manner is very much of ‘typical politician’. The only one who doesn’t come across as ‘typical’ is Ming, and that’s because he’s so grand he’s ‘super-establishment’; reassuring to grannies as the sort of Prime Minister their grandfathers might have voted for, and that’s a useful attribute, but hardly going to invigorate the youth vote.

It’s easy to knock each of the candidates and their supporters, and I notice that each camp is laying into the other with gusto. Well, I’m going to try and set out what I think are the strengths and weaknesses of each, and how each might strengthen their appeal to me. At this stage, I could easily vote for any of them (and I was never going to vote for Mark, though I’m sad at what happened to him). So it’s up to them and their supporters to persuade me and people like me. I’ve already heard more than enough along the lines that ‘Scary’ is only backed by the establishment and Young Turks who want to be leader in five years’ time; that ‘Flaky’ is only backed by ‘lefties’ and Christians; and that ‘Who?’ is only backed by Young Turks who don’t want to be leader in five years’ time.

Tip: slinging mud at another candidate is a big turn-off for me.

Labels: Charles Kennedy, Leaders' Debate, Liberal Democrats