Love and Liberty

How are you with Photoshop, flags and Batman?

Last night’s LBC debate between Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage saw one of the most telling clashes about crime. Nick said we were better off IN to fight crime and get better justice. Nigel said he was so hell-bent against any form of European co-operation that he’d rather see cross-border criminals go free on killing sprees and British tourists locked up without help.

So where is the Photoshopped poster of Nick Clegg as Batman (in half-EU stars, half-Union Jack Batsuit) vs Nigel Farage, the Joker, saying ‘Together, We Fight Crime’? Your turn! Can you take this opportunity to turn them into a colourful graphic before next week’s rematch?

The Lib Dems have turned part of Nick’s attack into a poster, but a ridiculous picture is worth a thousand words. And I should know – I like a thousand words.

Here’s the Cast of Characters I’m Looking For

Nick Clegg IS Batman

In half-EU stars, half-Union Jack Batsuit, with ears (armoured nipples optional), and dynamic pro-European Arrest Warrant slogan, ‘Together, We Fight Crime!’

He won’t thank you, but I will.

Nigel Farage IS the Joker

UKIP’s colours already run to the purple suit, so that’s most of the work done already. Just change the sickly green highlights to sickly yellow, and you’re away. With an exaggerated downturned grimace of hatred for immigrants instead of a grin!

Yes, I know that the real Mr Farage’s face goes frothing-mad beetroot rather than deathly pale, but no fictional character could be as ludicrous as the real thing.


And if you’re up to a few minor supporting characters, even though they were too scared to appear in the story and bottled it…

David Cameron IS Two-Face

Hinting at ‘OUT’ to his Conservative Party members, reassuring he’s ‘IN’ to the public at large!

Ed Miliband IS the Riddler

What will his policy be? Search for Labour’s deviously concealed and indecipherable off-the-record briefing clues to see if you can work it out!


Riddle me this: is Mr Miliband already regretting running away from the debate and leaving the leadership of the whole progressive side of British politics to Nick Clegg because Ed was terrified of losing the racist vote? This morning’s off-the-record Riddler clue says that next year, anyway, he’d be happy to debate Nigel Farage as well as Nick Clegg, and accuses Two-Face of being cowardly. Which makes cowardly Mr Miliband pretty two-faced himself.

But riddle me that: if all the other three Leaders are willing to debate each other before the 2015 General Election, and Mr Cameron tries to run away, will that any longer be enough to stop the debates happening? As of this week, the broadcasters – LBC, Sky and BBC all helping stage the two European debates – have accepted the precedent that if a Party Leader, even the Prime Minister, is invited to a debate but too frit to show up, they can go ahead anyway and just leave him looking like the cowardly bottler he is.

So if Mr Cameron thinks he’s got a veto on the Leaders’ Debates… Toss a coin. (Two-)Heads, it’s an empty chair for the frit PM.

Labels: Batman, British Politics, Conservatives, European Politics, Labour, Leaders' Debate, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, Pictures, UKIP

The attacks and smears launched by the Tory "forces of hell" today, the establishment closing ranks behind David Cameron to try to block change, they all signify one thing: regardless of the actual outcome, they all expect Nick to win the second debate.

So the question is, looking at Channel Four's "Ask the Chancellors" and the first Leader's Debate on ITV... what spin are the Tories planning to use this time? And will it be another U-Turn on what they said last time?

Those excuses in full –

- Vince only did well because he was in the middle and looked in control



- Cameron only did badly because he was in the middle and was picked on



- Osborne only did badly because he was on the side and looked sidelined



- Nick only did well because he was on the side and looked like the outsider



- Vince only did well because he didn't get asked any tough questions (by, er, Osborne)



- Nick only did well because he was fed questions that let him talk policy (by, er, Cameron)



- Vince only did well because the audience was stuffed with Liberal Democrats applauding and laughing



- Cameron only did badly because he couldn't connect to an audience who weren't allowed to applaud or laugh



- Vince only does well because the media have him on all the time and put him on a pedestal



- Nick only does well because people have never heard of him



- Cameron (elected Tory leader 2005) only does badly because he's been doing the job so long he's portrayed as yesterday's news



- Nick (elected Liberal Democrat leader 2007) only does well because he's not been doing the job for long enough



[that's enough useless Tory excuses, ed]

The only way that the Tories can plausibly complain that Nick's profile is because people have only just heard of him is if they are retrospectively condemning the media exclusion of Liberal Democrats over the last three years. And are they?

Labels: Conservatives, General Election, Leaders' Debate, Nick Clegg

And there were only 511 votes in it! I was thinking that the Liberal Democrat electorate was about the size of a Parliamentary constituency, and there we go and make the result a marginal. Well done, too, to Chris, for coming so close – something that shows how impressive both candidates were, and how important both will be to heading our success. But most of all, well done and good luck to Nick Clegg, and it was great to see him reach out with such an energetic, optimistic, Liberal speech, setting out his ambition to change politics and the country.

Blimus, that was close. But didn’t he sound good?

First, a witty and insightful little speech from Vince, clearly enjoying his encore as Acting Leader; then, a gracious and generous little speech from Chris to congratulate Nick, predicting he’ll be a great Leader; and then in effect two speeches from Nick, one to the hall and one to the country, one self-effacing and light-hearted, immediately congratulating and, I hope, signalling a major role for his former rival (“As of now we are colleagues once again, and I am really looking forward to working with you for the sake of Liberalism in Britain”), then the main event powerful, passionately Liberal and showing him at his best.

“I’m a Liberal – by temperament, by instinct, by upbringing.” A great opening line for the ‘outward’ section of Nick’s speech. I wonder if he knows it’s almost word-for-word from John Steed? But he went on to personalise his beliefs, to tie them to his family, his party and his country, with a strong evocation of what Liberalism is and why it’s in tune with Britain:

“My own family was marked, scattered, reunited by the tragic conflicts of the last century. I was taught from an early age that Britain was a place of tolerance and pluralism, with a history steeped in democracy and the Rule of Law. I believe that Liberalism is the thread that holds together everything that this country stands for…

“We’re a people with a strong sense of fair play and social justice. An instinct to protect the environment for future generations. We’re suspicious of arbitrary power, wary of government interference. We want to play an active, enlightened role in the wider world. And we have always put our faith in the ability of ordinary men and women to change things for the better.”

Then, of course, the optimism was tempered by realism, facing up to the problem that this is still not the Liberal Britain we want it to be, with “our civil liberties casually cast aside,” “gigantic, faceless, and incompetent government bureaucracies” – never a truer word spoken – and families struggling to meet each month’s bills, to balance the demands of work and the time for a real family life. Politics, he said, was broken, out of touch with people and the modern world. His one simple ambition: “To change Britain. To make it the Liberal country I believe the British people want it to be.” Well, not that simple, Nick. Go on? That would be a country where people can take charge of their lives, where words on the environment turn into real action, “where no-one is condemned by the circumstances of their birth”.

“Why have we stopped imagining a better society? Look at what we’ve got. Labour and the Conservatives have governed in exactly the same way – top-down, centralising. I simply refuse to believe that the only alternative to a clapped-out Labour Government is a Conservative Party that has no answers to the big issues. Environmentalism without substance. Social justice without money. Internationalism without Europe. So the challenge for my party is to define a Liberal alternative to the discredited politics of big government.”

And that means opening up the Liberal Democrats, Westminster and politics – holding regular public meetings, give people who support the Lib Dems but aren’t members a say (sounds inviting, but what’s the meat? We didn’t see it in his campaign, and he doesn’t have a blank cheque) and spend one day a week campaigning outside Westminster, again and positively learning a trick from Paddy. He’ll also be setting up a network of families – however defined? – to tell him his priorities. Which should be interesting.

“If you once voted for us, but you think we’ve spent too much time focusing on ourselves…
“If you once voted for the Conservative Party, but have no idea what they stand for any more…
“If you once voted for the Labour Party, but feel let down by ten years of disappointment…
“If you’ve given up voting altogether, but still care about the world we live in…
“Then a newly united, energetic and optimistic Liberal Democrat party is the party for you.”

And, again, the party will need to change. “More professional, more united, more ambitious.” Good for you, sir, and the same to you.

“Liberalism is the creed of our times. The politics of ‘left’ and ‘right’ has broken down. Labour and the Conservatives are mutating into each other, united in defence of a system that has let the people down. Instead, we must start where people are, not where we think they should be. In short, I want the Liberal Democrats to be the future of politics. Because Liberal Democrats have the courage to imagine a better society. To break the stifling grip of the two-party system for good, to bring in a new politics, of politicians who listen to people – not themselves – no more business as usual, no more government knows best. I want today to mark the beginning of a real change in Britain. The beginning of Britain’s Liberal future.”

A solid, passionate, persuasive speech, then, and either daring or introspective to use the word “Liberal” so much. I hope he gets to reclaim it; more than that, I hope he gets it to resonate with people as he clearly hopes it does. That means I hope he’ll set out in people’s minds a much firmer sense of what being “Liberal” actually means so that people will really identify with the idea, and his speech today made a good start on that; Liberal, strongly delivered, outward-looking …Just a shame to have that line about “a people’s politics”. Dear, dear, that sounds like Tony Blair a decade ago or Eastern European states two or more decades ago. But when a Liberal Democrat Leader makes a speech that has a curmudgeon like me beaming for most of it and just giving one little wince, that’s a definite win!


Update: back from a quick but invigorating bloggers’ interview with Nick (of which more tomorrow, fingers crossed), and rather than just the bits I typed in you can now read his whole acceptance speech online. Which means I’ve spotted the “values” line I was sure I’d heard first time out but couldn’t find when scanning back through the speech to select bits in the following half-hour or so while typing those selections. Of course, it’s because I was looking in the second part of the speech, and it was the bit he started with. One of the things I like about Nick’s ideas is that he wants to communicate our values rather than just our policies, as he did in his evocation of Britain’s Liberalism above. Well, so even I can’t miss it, his promise to do that is up on the much-improved (for one day only, apparently) front of the official Lib Dem website:

“With renewed ambition, we will reach out to the millions of people who share our values but have not yet voted for us.”

Labels: British Politics, Leaders' Debate, Liberal Democrats, Liberalism, Nick Clegg, Speeches

The ballot for the new Liberal Democrat Leader closes tomorrow: there’s still time to send your vote by special delivery or deliver it by hand if you’re in London. But if you’ve left it this late, then how to cast it? A vote for Chris Huhne is a vote for the Liberal Democrats to be noticed. My lovely Richard has said throughout this campaign that the candidates’ most often-used soundbites are the wrong way round. Nick calls for us to step outside our comfort zone; well, the Leader most likely to make us get up and get spiky is Chris. Nick is a nice man, and we’re a nice party; we’d be comfortable with him. I’m not at all sure Chris is a nice man, but he’ll drive the party into the headlines rather than keep us comfily passive.

Ambition, Detail and a Hungry Bastard

I came into this campaign undecided and have remained so until late, this week (as the deadline loomed) often switching from hour to hour, but, seeing how much Chris has improved since his Leadership bid last year and seeing how he’s made the running, I’ve no doubt he’s had the more impressive campaign. In both this year’s and last year’s Leadership contests, Chris has unerringly found the issues that get attention, and in politics you need the killer instinct. Last year, I hoped Ming might be as fearsome as Francis Urquhart; well, Chris is not a clever plotter who will stab you slyly in the back like that. He stabs you in the front and makes sure the cameras are there to see it. He may not be liked, but he gets noticed in a way that Nick’s campaign has been entirely hopeless at doing. Every Liberal Democrat in the land is surely sick of us never getting a word in edgeways – well, Chris looks like the answer to that wish (but be careful what you wish for). He’s said we need to set the agenda, to pass the ‘so what?’ test, and he’s done that in this contest with flying colours, not just on the territory of the Leadership fight but in making the news on other issues such as party funding.

Where Nick gives the sometimes endearing, sometimes vague impression of thinking out loud, Chris seems firmly to know his own mind. He’s put across a series of very clear messages, very effectively: a fairer society, a greener society, where power is handed back to the communities around Britain. He puts an emphasis on poverty and child poverty, on localism, saying that if you impose solutions you get “an amazing nation-wide balls-up,” and wants us to regain an anti-establishment “spikiness”. Then he argues that we must also establish ourselves as competent to run the economy (stepping outside our ‘comfort zone’, if you will), offering his real-world experience to take on Mr Brown. His answers show a mastery of detail, even if they sometimes go on a bit.

With all this, it’s tempting to say that Chris is “the finished article,” showing us his best while Nick’s potential has only been glimpsed. I think there’s a lot of truth in that, but I can’t be sure that Chris won’t get better, too; after all, though he made the running in last year’s Leadership contest too, since then he’s improved hugely (and consistently) as a speaker, and this year he’s muscled in on the media far more effectively. So who’s to say he’s not got more of his own learning curve to go before he reaches his peak? Wherever he is in terms of realising his own potential, where he is already is impressive: you know what his message is, even if you don’t agree with it; his “sharp elbows” make sure he gets that message across in places that wouldn’t automatically give him a hearing; and his performances have been consistently strong across the board. And he’s been able to withstand a host of negative attacks without crumbling. A new Leader will have to hit the ground running and make an impact. I’ve no doubt that Chris is capable of doing that.

He sounds like a very impressive candidate, and he is. But I do wonder if he can inspire the passion, loyalty and just plain liking that reaches the voters who don’t listen to the detail and sustains a Leader among the Party faithful when times get rough. The dilemma is that while Chris is more likely to be heard, when Nick is heard then Nick is more likely to be liked. What gives me pause for thought is that Chris’ greatest strength is also his greatest weakness: that he’s a hungry, ambitious bastard with a killer instinct for getting noticed at a higher cost than is strictly decent.

But Will He Be Liked?

So what does make Chris the candidate who’ll make us uncomfortable? It isn’t just that he’ll get heard on issues where we’ve not been comfortable fighting, but the way he does it. He’s made waves but sometimes giving the impression he doesn’t care how. Famously, he may have repudiated the ‘Calamity Clegg’ title, but he stuck to the attack lines inside the dossier with that on the front, having clearly been part of developing them in campaigning ‘wargaming’ though not publishing them under that particular name. There’s nothing wrong with putting your opponent under scrutiny, but three things made that the moment when Chris’ campaign hit its first rock. First, the crassness of the title, which came back to hit both of them even though Chris immediately repudiated it. Second, the accusations about Nick’s positions on public services were in several key ways more imagined than real – which implies a looser relationship with the truth than Liberal Democrats are happy with, though Nick’s weeks-long fumbling in settling the issue inspired no confidence either. And third, that when assertion turns into aggression and Chris just couldn’t resist putting the boot in when every onlooker was starting to get squeamish, people recoiled. Chris’ instinct for what the Party likes failed to inform him that we don’t like ‘nasty’, and that holing a fellow Liberal Democrat below the waterline does more harm than good.

Another drawback to Chris is his very attention to detail. It means there’s plenty to disagree with; it makes you wonder what he’ll be like if ‘crossed’ by the Party; and, ironically in view of his pursuing Nick on a lack of clarity, some of his positions mean something a little different to the soundbite when under close scrutiny. So, for example, I’m slightly wary that ‘freedom’ seems a little down in his priorities, and isn’t a word he usually chooses to talk about, or of opening up subjects for yet more debate that have already been gone into over and over, like Trident or local taxation. I’m slightly wary of the extent to which he might try and enforce his own views on the Party, or what will happen if our carefully considered policy process or a passionately argued Conference vote goes against him. And I’m wary of where some of his convictions lead, such as for example the line in his personal Manifesto that says “we must have the courage of our Liberal convictions” over drugs. This sounds like a liberalising instinct at play, but it turns out on close questioning that on drugs, and smoking, and on who knows what else, Chris’ instincts actually lean towards prohibition. Here, though Nick needed as much prodding to give a position and shows an endearingly obvious dislike of being prodded, Nick was both evidence-based and willing to follow that towards the Party’s existing much more Liberal policy, persistently ignored by the Leadership.

Will Chris be liked, then, to give him a cushion when times get rough? Is he willing to play a bit too foul? Are his instincts entirely to my taste? And, despite his ability to punch above our usual weight in the media, when all our enemies there decide to ‘get him’, will it derail his message that his constituency has such a small majority for him? While I’m certain he’ll keep his seat, there is the risk that his 500 majority ‘being at risk’ will become ‘the story’, which won’t stop Chris being re-elected but may stop people seeing us as winners elsewhere. Like ‘events’, sometimes inconvenient facts can clobber even the most media-savvy politician. On the other hand, of all the things that have come up so far in his media appearances during the campaign, that doesn’t seem to have been an issue…

Chris Vs Nick

Chris won Question Time, but by much more in the first half than the second. He was far better-able to deal with hostile questions, and it wasn’t that he flagged by the end; Chris was consistently good throughout, while Nick just rallied intermittently to hit higher but rarer peaks than Chris. And, yes, when Nick was good, he was very very good, but when he was bad, he was forgettable. Chris was impressive with his message, his detail and with his real-life experience – though his use of that terrible Ronald Reagan soundbite about age that, er, served Ming so well was his one serious howler (and though neither of them have ‘the Hung Parliament Question’ right yet, both are an improvement on Ming’s ‘La la la la la I have my fingers in my ears’ response). He’s developed considerably more passion and a sense of humour since last year. He can still look a bit stiff, though; it’s unfair to characterise him as a ‘machine politician’ to Nick’s ‘natural’, but there’s an element of truth in it, and for all Chris’ anti-establishment message, that’s not his manner. While Nick’s image seems often all over the place, Chris for better or worse comes across definitely as Chris, though as I’ve compared Nick to so many other politicians I will say that sometimes, when Chris is declaiming in a slightly pompous way, he does remind me of Paddy Ashdown in his bad moments, where Nick is reminiscent of what we used to love about Paddy instead.

The Politics Show, of course, was lost by both of them, but it was Chris’ badly calculated aggression that managed the mutually assured destruction. Chris was too aggressive and not fair to Nick, which was off-putting; though it exposed Nick as tetchy and unable to answer effectively, you got the feeling that the damage to Nick was rather like being caught in the blast radius of a hand grenade with which Chris had eagerly mortared his own foot. And that definitely damaged his campaign just as it was flying. Still, while that was the time Chris lost his cool, Nick seems to do it far more often but in a less disastrous way.

One after-effect of the Politics Show dust-up was that Chris lost the Newsnight debate a few days later, perhaps because he’d had had so much feedback of how badly he’d miscalculated and was uncharacteristically reticent, perhaps because Nick had raised his game. There was a more worrying element to Chris that night, though, and ironically in view of his main line of attack on Nick, this time it was a major policy issue on which Chris showed a lack of clarity and which could come back to haunt him. The issue was immigration, and while Nick said no, there hasn’t been too much immigration, but more attention needs to be given to the needs of communities whose resources are being overstretched, Chris refused to say whether there’d been too much immigration or not. In mid-waffle, he sounded terribly parochial, and even gave the impression he favoured protectionism. I suspect waffling around the subject of immigration and trying to appeal to both sides is morally superior to a naked play for the anti-immigrant vote, but Chris’ reply will have pleased neither side and wasn’t an edifying sight, though he did have the odd good point buried in there. Bizarrely, neither used the then-newsworthy argument of local councils that there should be more government support for areas where the census reports were screwy because of sudden increases in population.

But by last week and the Today Programme, Chris was back to walking all over Nick, in a thoroughly Liberal way, and doing it assertively rather than aggressively. He’s really very good at getting a word in.

At the London hustings I went to, Chris gave the best speech I’ve seen him give – polished, fluent, persuasive, funny. And yet Nick flew past him by miles. Chris can do passion, but Nick at his best is better for vision. Again, though, it was much closer on the questions, with Chris for me edging it by a smidgeon but both of them frankly bum-numbing in their wordiness. And he even declined the opportunity to put the boot in, being regretful and funny on Saj Karim rather than a hatchet man, so he’s learning. He was also very good throughout at remembering the names of the people he was replying to, which is a good psychological trick for making direct communication (and, Nick, really only needs a pen and paper!).

Odd thing about that hustings, by the way: the stickers. Last year we had one candidate with a reddish-orange, one using the safely prescribed Party Pantone, and the other with a yellowish-green, enabling undecided voters to display an exciting traffic light formation. This year, both colour tones were identical, so it was impossible to tell at a glance which candidate was which…

Vote For Chris

Both candidates are good Liberals (Nick’s instincts slightly more to my taste) and both are capable of communicating what we stand for (Chris slightly more effectively). If the ballot paper offered a vote for Nick as Leader to set out our vision alongside Chris as Deputy Leader with a roving brief to grab the agenda from our opponents and a licence to kill, I’d go for it like a shot. But there’s a crueller choice involved, and our Leader will have to shoulder both roles.

Chris has stood up to everything thrown at him in two Leadership contests without complaint, and has seized the agenda in both. We need that combination of toughness and the killer instinct. He’ll take us outside our comfort zone. Nick is capable of being a great Leader too, but his campaign has shown he’s not yet ready for it: with two Leaders destroyed, the party must be certain the next can stand up for himself. We can’t afford a feeble Leader reliant on a bigger ‘beast’ to ride shotgun for him – just look at how that approach turned out for John Major and Ken Clarke. Chris will be a Leader who will elbow his way onto the national stage and be ruthlessly effective. That’s why one of our votes goes to Chris Huhne.

And Finally… The Nasty Question

At the bloggers’ interviews with the Leadership candidates, on which I’ve been very slow to write, both candidates were very impressive, with both more charming, charismatic and animated than they’ve been on TV. Both were also more long-winded, with Nick just edging it for the one who went on the most (not that I’m one to complain). I’m also not one to complain about lateness, but you should know that Chris pounced on the opportunity to see bloggers and set a date that was within days of the first enquiry; Nick’s team needed a lot of prodding, eventually providing a date a fortnight later, in a typical example of his campaign’s ability to meet the 24-hour hour media cycle and set the agenda (though in Nick’s favour, he brought us teas and coffees, only one of which bore traces of strychnine). To test each of them – as I had with Ming before – I constructed a very leading narrative out of which I sprung a ‘nasty question’. With Chris, I asked the question at the time as a natural follow-up to James Graham’s on his ‘narrative’, and though the others have long since written up their own takes on his answer, here are my notes…

“Ming said he failed because he needed to be more popular. You say we need to revive our anti-establishment edge. Your ‘story’ is that you’re the rich guy, the journalist, the politician – all very popular professions – and of course the man from Brussels. If our Leader needs to be popular and anti-establishment, how is that you?”

Chris’ answer, given at the time and without a fortnight to ponder it, was along the lines that being anti-establishment is “a cast of mind” rather than personal circumstances – “rocking the boat, standing up for the underdog”. He gave as examples how as a journalist he had to ask the awkward questions, and how starting up and building a business is about fighting your way in. Slightly surprisingly, he lauded Microsoft as an example of an anti-establishment outfit coming out on top. He has “a fundamental belief that things should be changed” – politics as it is must be exposed as “the Emperor’s New Clothes”.


You can read my alternative “A Vote For Nick” here.

Labels: British Politics, Leaders' Debate, Liberal Democrats, Liberalism, Paddy Ashdown, The Golden Dozen

The ballot for the new Liberal Democrat Leader closes tomorrow: there’s still time to send your vote by special delivery or deliver it by hand if you’re in London. But if you’ve left it this late, then how to cast it? A vote for Nick Clegg is a vote for someone with deeply Liberal instincts he can put across with passion and appeal. My lovely Richard has said throughout this campaign that the candidates’ most often-used soundbites are the wrong way round. Chris calls for us to elect a Leader who’ll be a risk; well, the riskiest option is Nick. Chris has been consistent in his message and performance throughout this campaign, while Nick has often underperformed – but, at his best, Nick is the inspiring one. Let’s gamble that Leadership will bring out ‘inspiring Nick’ and put ‘ineffective Nick’ to rest.

Vision, Passion and a Nice Bloke

I came into this campaign undecided and have remained so until late, this week (as the deadline loomed) often switching from hour to hour, but, having vaguely known Nick to speak to for some years and with confidence in his Liberal instincts and his approachability, I started off leaning towards him. I was very impressed by him some years ago on the It’s About Freedom paper on the Party’s philosophy: I get the feeling I agree with his Liberal instincts more than I do with Chris. He’s pleasant, engaging, and very bright – he’s absolutely not a lightweight. When he’s caught fire, such as his sudden passion on what drives him in politics on the Leadership Question Time, I’ve also seen a real Leader in the making. His speech at the London hustings showed a capacity for intellectual depth about the coming issues, for a good turn of phrase (or the ability to spot someone who can write one) and a captivating delivery. Nick has great potential – I’d like to see him deliver on it.

Nick has natural advantages beyond the choices he’s made in his philosophy. He’s not only quite handsome, but – when he relaxes – looks natural and at ease on TV. He can speak directly and in a down-to-earth way; he can talk around a subject as if thinking aloud. Both styles come over as genuine, human, and even (rare for politics) thoughtful. I think he has the chance to connect with a lot of voters who might not give more processed-seeming politicians the time of day, and perhaps with some of the younger voters that we’ve worryingly lost to the Tories over the past couple of years – not through his instilling fear of how bad the Tories were when they were little kids, but through a message of optimism for the future that the Tories just can’t match. And it is thinking about the future where Nick excels, setting out his vision on subjects like powerlessness, social stagnation, globalisation, fear and the environment. I don’t always know what the specifics of Nick’s message are… But I’m comfortable with the direction, and his tone and ‘mood music’ seem right for the Party.

He sounds like a very impressive candidate, and he is. But I do wonder if he’s ready yet for the big step, and what worries me isn’t any negative campaigning from Chris or sneers from the media. What gives me pause for thought is that Nick and his campaign have failed so often not just to match expectations but even to seem up to the job.

But Is Nick Ready?

So what exactly is the risk with Nick? Well, Nick at his best is inspiring, but his campaign has had three consistent problems. The first is that it’s made little headway, despite the backing of most of the Party establishment and a favourable wind from most of the media that bothered – Chris has set all the agenda, leaving Nick on the back foot. If he can’t make the running in a Liberal Democrat contest, and with all that support backing him up, how will he manage it in a hostile media environment and starting from third?

The second problem is how he’s dealt with negativity. I’m in little doubt that Chris’ campaign has been more willing to go for the jugular from the top than has Nick’s, though it’s not all been one way. Almost every time Nick’s opened his mouth, he’s slipped out his stiletto soundbite that he doesn’t sound like a “Westminster policy wonk” (translation: ‘I’m a human; Chris is a robot’; ironically, if you know what a “policy wonk” is, you’re almost certainly a politics wonk), and some of Nick’s supporters have been infinitely more vitriolic than Chris’. The reaction to attack, though, has been equanimity from Chris and constantly complaining that it’s unfair from Nick and his team. Some of it has been unfair, but goodness me, deal with it fast and move on rather than letting it linger for weeks and then running crying to a grown-up when it all gets too much. With the proven ability of the media to destroy our Leaders, I’m worried that Nick seems so easily rattled by relatively gentle assaults. Will he be floored with one punch in the real, nasty world? Nick may be more likeable, but he’s also more breakable.

The last and most risky element of his campaign is that it’s been so consistently inconsistent. It’s not that he started well and faded, or let Chris get off the starting blocks first and then caught up – throughout the campaign, watchers have never known whether they’d get Nick being at ease, on the ball and engaging, or looking nervous, stammering a bit and waffling round a question he doesn’t want to answer. Viewers of The West Wing will know the syndrome: will he be President Bartlet, or will he be just Uncle Fluffy? I’m confident Nick has it in him to be Leader. But is he there yet? If he wins and messes it up because his confidence and abilities aren’t yet honed, it’ll do neither him nor the Party any good. This is nothing to do with his age, nor his experience. It’s simply from watching his campaign and going, ‘Oh, I dunno… Why is he so ill-prepared?’ When his passion shows, it’s captivating, but it doesn’t show often enough. Will it?

Nick Vs Chris

You’ve probably seen and heard the programmes where the two candidates debated. You’ve probably made up your own mind. But as far as I’m concerned, it goes like this.

Nick lost Question Time, but by much more in the first half than the second. With both initially confronted by hostile questions, Nick was the one who couldn’t deal with them. Later in the programme, Nick found his feet a couple of times and showed some passion; his highs were higher than Chris’, but most of the time Nick just wasn’t reaching the highs. Chris was pretty consistent, but Nick was all over the place. In some ways, the most worrying aspect of Nick’s performance came with the questions where he was best, rather than the forgettable ones. Without exception, they were not the first answers given; either because Chris had gone first or because Nick jumped in for a second go. Each time, it seemed he needed time to think about it, and usually he needed a second answer to correct himself after fluffing his first go. On the question when he finally flew, talking about what motivated him in politics, it was his third go. First up on why he should be Leader, he flannelled. Chris came in with his real-life experience, much more effectively. Nick, clearly feeling ‘It’s not fair,’ chipped back in to boast about his modesty, which by definition is a bit of a no-no. And then, on his third attempt, he gave the answer everyone remembers [for posterity, I can’t find a clip of it online, but Nick finally got his passion going about children born into poverty and their shockingly different life chances just in different parts of Sheffield, and on his anger against illegal war, as MatGB records in his helpful summaries of the debate on this thread (and which Tom Papworth terms Nick’s “haymaker”). He was also good in contrasting himself and Mr Cameron, both the same age: Nick was appalled by Thatcherism when growing up; David Cameron became one of her footsoldiers. That’s a fundamentally different choice]. So the problem is not when he got it right and knocked spots off the other feller, but how many takes it took him to get there. How many media opportunities do the Liberal Democrats have to get one go to make an impact, let alone two or three to feel their way to one that’s any good?

One of the odd things watching Nick is that, though I’ve thought he was very effective, rounded and competent for years, on TV suddenly he seems much more formless. As other bloggers have said, sometimes he doesn’t seem like ‘the finished product’. So while, for better or worse, Chris comes across definitely as Chris, Nick’s protean state keeps firing off impressions of other people (though despite what’s ever written, never with the sliminess of David Cameron). In his less impressive moments on Question Time, I was getting a cruel whiff of Boris ‘Um um I don’t know how to answer the question but you like me’ Johnson, but mostly Nick reminds me of other Liberal Democrat Leaders. Is he Charles Kennedy, likeable, human, talking in approachable language but waffling a bit and often coming across as rather ineffectual and poor on detail? Often looks like it. Is he Ming Campbell, talked up by the Party establishment and raved about by the media, but with all of us hoping by this stage of a lacklustre Leadership campaign that he’s just been under-performing for a bit and it isn’t that he’s just not got it? Or is he Paddy Ashdown, with old-fashioned good looks and a stirring ability to wow us with the vision thing – and, yes, I’ve often got that Paddy feeling from Nick when his passion kicks in, too.

The Politics Show, of course, was lost by both of them. Chris was too aggressive and not fair to Nick, which was off-putting; Nick was tetchy and unable to answer effectively something that by his own testimony had been going on for ages. And then he went crying to the Chief Whip afterwards. Give me strength, or indeed, give it to Nick! A couple of days later, I’d say Nick won Newsnight, perhaps because Chris had had so much feedback of how badly he’d miscalculated and was uncharacteristically reticent. But by last week and the Today Programme Chris was back to walking all over him, assertively rather than aggressively. Nick really has to shape up at getting it right first time.

Given the chance to practice, Nick is very impressive. At the London hustings I went to, Chris gave the best speech I’ve seen him give – polished, fluent, persuasive, funny. And yet Nick flew past him by miles. Passionately Liberal (and social Liberal at that), internationalist and visionary, it wowed the audience despite the odd malapropism and having fewer applause-prompting soundbites crafted into it. On the questions, though, it was again much closer, with Chris for me edging it by a smidgeon but both of them frankly bum-numbing in their wordiness. I think Nick’s questions may have lost a point from me when he said that “Only in a Liberal Democrat meeting would you be asked to solve the Israel-Palestine question in thirty seconds”; a good five minutes of flannel later, the drooping audience was wishing he’d stuck to that time limit.

Odd thing about that hustings, by the way: the stickers. Last year we had one candidate with a reddish-orange, one using the safely prescribed Party Pantone, and the other with a yellowish-green, enabling undecided voters to display an exciting traffic light formation. This year, both colour tones were identical, so it was impossible to tell at a glance which candidate was which…

Vote For Nick

Both candidates are good Liberals (Nick’s instincts slightly more to my taste) and both are capable of communicating what we stand for (Chris slightly more effectively). If the ballot paper offered a vote for Nick as Leader to set out our vision alongside Chris as Deputy Leader with a roving brief to grab the agenda from our opponents and a licence to kill, I’d go for it like a shot. But there’s a crueller choice involved, and our Leader will have to shoulder both roles.

Nick has Liberal instincts and is capable of broad appeal, and our press operation will have to improve enormously to give him that chance. Nick is a risk that I hope will pay off – a choice in hope that he can consistently be as good as the best he’s been this campaign, rather than from fear that he won’t withstand the media whirlwind. Nick will be a Leader who will speak to people’s hearts and give a hopeful vision. That’s why one of our votes goes to Nick Clegg.

And Finally… The Nasty Question

At the bloggers’ interviews with the Leadership candidates, on which I’ve been very slow to write, both candidates were very impressive, with both more charming, charismatic and animated than they’ve been on TV. Both were also more long-winded, with Nick just edging it for the one who went on the most (not that I’m one to complain). I’m also not one to complain about lateness, but you should know that Chris pounced on the opportunity to see bloggers and set a date that was within days of the first enquiry; Nick’s team needed a lot of prodding, eventually providing a date a fortnight later, in a typical example of his campaign’s ability to meet the 24-hour hour media cycle and set the agenda (though in Nick’s favour, he brought us teas and coffees, only one of which bore traces of strychnine). To test each of them – as I had with Ming before – I constructed a very leading narrative out of which I sprung a ‘nasty question’. With Nick, there wasn’t time to ask it in person after all his other answers, but I e-mailed it on, and after a couple of weeks’ prodding to them and then a couple of weeks’ delay on my own part in publishing it, here it is…

“Just last year, your judgment was that you weren’t ready to be Leader, and that Ming was the best man for the job. Ming’s just stepped down because he didn’t think he could make a success of the job, and now all of a sudden you’re up to it. Was your judgement wrong then, or wrong now? And how do we judge?”

“Dear Alex

“Nearly two years ago, when Charles stood down, I was certain that only Ming, with his experience and standing in the party, could settle the nerves of the party and point us to the future.

“I still believe that judgement was right. People too readily forget what a fragile state the party was in at the time, and too readily overlook what Ming achieved in very difficult circumstances.

“I did not believe a ‘rookie’ MP, just arrived in the House of Commons, could have forged the unity in a somewhat fractious Parliamentary Party necessary to move the party forward. I stick to that view.

“Now the circumstances are quite different. Being a liberal Lib Dem Home Affairs Spokesman is widely regarded in Westminster to be one of the toughest jobs in one of the hardest policy areas. I’ve been up against three Labour Home Secretaries, leading debates on civil liberties, counter-terrorism, crime, anti-social behaviour, the prisons crisis, and immigration. And I’ve got the scars to show it! So I’m far better equipped for the job now than I was two years ago.

“I also believe that political success is not possible without unity. The fact that a large number of my Parliamentary colleagues now feel that I’ve proved myself enough to deserve their support in this leadership contest is important. Not because of some arbitrary headcount of supporters, but as an indication that the people who work most closely with me, day in day out, now think that I am capable of leading the party as a whole.

“All best wishes

Nick”

You can read my alternative “A Vote For Chris” here.

Labels: British Politics, Leaders' Debate, Liberal Democrats, Liberalism, Nick Clegg, The Golden Dozen

Next week there’ll be a new Liberal Democrat Leader. One candidate’s team says they have it in the bag; the other adopts the more traditional Lib Dem approach that it’s too close to call. My own tip to get the vote out is that a first class stamp may now be risky with the Christmas post, but that if you’re in London and really want to make sure, the ERS office in Clarendon Road is only a few minutes’ walk from Turnpike Lane (Piccadilly Line Tube). Er, not that I’ve ever delivered a ballot paper very near to the deadline. Perish the thought. But as a bonus, if you’re there just before midday on Saturday you might well run into Simon Hughes, as I once did at a similarly late stage.

The Unmissable Blogs

If you’re still wavering at the last minute – or if you’ve already voted and are agonising over whether you did the right thing – these are what for me are the must-read blog entries of the last few weeks of the Leadership contest. First, of course, is Andy Darley’s viciously barbed piece where he argues that one candidate may not be up to it while the other’s effective but a bastard: unmissable if you want to find out which is a “ripe peach” and which a “pirate submarine”. I feel quite a lot more enthusiastic about both than Andy does, but still agree with a lot of his analysis in a more ‘glass half-full’ way.

For arguments in favour of each candidate by incisive writers who thought long and hard before making their decisions, you can’t beat James Graham’s persuasive argument that while Chris has the right answers for now, Nick is asking the right questions for where we and the country need to be – unless it’s with Rob Fenwick’s mirror conclusion that Chris is ready to be Leader now, while Nick remains something of a blank canvas. Then, of course, there’s the lovely Andy Strange, with whom I got into an entertaining debate down the pub after the London Leadership Hustings when I told him I found his argument persuasive, but in diametrically the opposite way to that he meant.

There’s also my own piece from a few weeks ago on what a Leader’s for. Whether or not it’s any good, it still sums up much of what I feel about the contest (and thanks in particular to Alix and Jennie for being so nice about it!). I can still see advantages in each candidate that the other lacks, and drawbacks that the other doesn’t share: primarily that they’re Blake and Avon; vision versus vigour; that Nick’s more likely to be liked, while Chris is more likely to be heard. And both their slogans are still rubbish. Thankfully, the vitriol has calmed down enormously since I wrote about it – well done Linda, particularly, who’s now far more positive and far more persuasive, and I notice that some of the anonymous blogs clearly set up to attack Chris have dried up.

The Vince Problem

I will be happy with either of the potential victors on Monday, but whichever wins I desperately want the other’s talents in play too. I still hope that either will give the other a very top job – and, as I hope to justify in detail in a future article, I’ll commit heresy by saying that Saint Vince should stand aside as Deputy Leader and the MPs should vote it to the runner-up. Not that I think that’s likely, unfortunately. The success that Vince has had as acting Leader creates too problems. He’s probably unsackable, and is unlikely to want to give up either of his two top jobs – even though that’s one too many. The bigger but less controversial problem is again down to his strong performance.

Vince has ‘steadied the ship’, given us positive press coverage for the first time in ages, and raised party morale a bit at the gloomiest time for us for two decades. In the deadly terms of the media contest, unfortunately, that means that whoever comes next has to follow Vince the Success, while Vince only had to follow Ming the Failure. And it remains a fact that no Liberal Democrat Leader has ever seen a media honeymoon and opinion poll success immediately after their election. That the new guy’ll be called on to make an impression over Christmas – when there’s no opportunity to grandstand, and none of the public will be watching even if they try it – is probably giving each of them sleepless nights.

The best of luck to whoever wins. And if you haven’t yet voted, get down to the Post Box or, ideally, to the Tube. I won’t see you and Simon there on Saturday… But I confess I’ll be carrying two ballot papers to North London tomorrow morning!

Labels: Blogs, British Politics, Leaders' Debate, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, Top Tips

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

Chris Huhne for Leader? He appears to have the big mo, and creating momentum out of nowhere is a very useful trick for a third party, as is forcing the other two to fight on his territory. He’s very bright, writes very persuasively, and was effective in reaching a policy consensus on public services without making it simply bland. I agree with much of his policy ‘vision’, and he seems the most capable of giving a succinct and effective answer. He’s also putting across an impressive set of non-Westminster experience. So what’s my problem with him? ‘Dull’, in a very unkind word.

Like almost everyone else, Chris is the one I know least about. So my main view of him boils down to ‘relatively sensible policy wonk, but zero charisma’. It’s unfair to call someone dull when his policy programme has shaken up the campaign, but politics is an unfair business. He looks all right (as purely presentational issues go, he has the advantage of hair), but when he opens his mouth I’m reminded of Tom Baker’s withering assessment of Jeremy Irons: that he’d have been a great silent movie actor, but his voice is just so boring. Chris has got quite a nice voice, actually, but he seems unable to modulate it. He looks and sounds stiff. Don’t worry; I’ll have some ‘policy wonk vs policy wonk’ stuff in a minute, but I’m sorry to say that politics is shallow, and how you come across to people is important. Ming, at his best, has statesmanlike gravitas. Simon, at his best, can be passionate, or friendly and at ease. Chris, at his best, is… succinct. Unfortunately, he writes much better than his spoken delivery, and the election will be settled on television rather than through pamphleteering. Who is he going to appeal to? Yes, he can seem solid and serious, but does anyone really think he’ll come across as more solid and more serious than Gordon Brown? He really needs to work on sounding human, and I suspect hardwiring his massive brain to a virtual Charles Kennedy is as yet beyond the party’s budget for CGI.

Another issue for me is his seat. After Jackie in '99, I vowed to myself I wouldn't back another first-time MP with a tiny majority. After the European Parliament I can just about let him off the one, but a 500 majority? What is he thinking? Though he’ll probably hold it, there'll be no other story than 'Will the Lib Dem Leader lose his seat?' for us in the run-up to the election. So I worry. My other half is more sanguine, I should point out: “If the Tories want to make the issue of the election whether they can manage to knock down the tiniest of Lib Dem majorities, let them,” he said earlier. “The last election was about the Lib Dems trying to fight it out with the Tories for second place. If the Tories want to make the next one about fighting it out with the Lib Dems for third place, I doubt it’ll help them.”

His lack of Westminster experience isn’t necessarily a disadvantage; ‘the outsider coming in to clean up town’ is a powerful message. Unfortunately, that goes right back to the presentational issue: he doesn’t look or sound like an outsider. ‘The outsider from Brussels’ is a less helpful narrative, while ‘journalist’ probably beats even ‘MEP’ as a job description to go down like a lead balloon. On the other hand, the other two are lawyers, so it’s probably evens. Still, it makes the appeal that ‘As far as I know he doesn’t have the baggage of the other two’ (which some unkind observers might say makes him sound like the Liberal Democrats all over) weaker than it might otherwise be. And how did we come up with two out of three whose names sound like “Who”?

In fairness, his work on the Public Services Commission (or as it modestly became known, the Huhne Commission) was certainly impressive at bringing people together, and though he seemed a little high and mighty when he presented it to the FPC, he did the best job of promoting his policy paper round the party and media of any policy group chair I’ve seen. Obviously that meant self-promotion too, but he promoted the policies so well I was still impressed. The other side of his dealing with people, however, is his obvious ruthlessness, which is unattractive; perhaps he needed to from third place, but he’s been much more ruthless in person to the other two leadership candidates than they’ve been (their entourages are a different matter). He was quite open about being one of those to bring Charles down, too; I didn’t like it. Though it’s more attractive than plotting without holding the knife. And if he’s such a good team-builder, I do wonder that his team and following is mostly made up of people on whom he’s made a good first impression, rather than known him for a while. It’s striking that there are so many more MSPs, for example – as far away from him as possible – than MEPs who he worked with for years on his list of supporters.

I’m interested in the minutiae of policy. Even for a Liberal Democrat, this makes me unusual and strange. Chris is a policy wonk too, and not with just the first wild and wacky things that come into his head. I’ve read his manifesto, and I’ll not bore you with an in-depth analysis (that might be another post). However, as Chris’ campaign is the only one that is more clearly policy-driven than it is personality-driven, there are some I want to engage with. If you’re a policy wonk, people will pay more attention to your policies than to the others’, and some of them may come unstuck.

There’s good and bad here, and I have to declare an interest; I proposed pretty much exactly what Chris is saying about environmental taxation before the last election and got nowhere, so I wish at least that part of his programme well. However, where I disagree is on strict fiscal neutrality, something he appeared to endorse earlier on but seems to have backed away from in later answers. It’s because I do think income tax is the best we've got, but allowances are the key things to cut if we're going to. That leaves me wary that less tax altogether will be raised through progressive sources if we follow the apparent Chris plan to drop the 50p rate. Dropping road pricing, too, and only going with one eco-tax, also seems a mistake. Easy for someone else to nick; over-prescriptive; inflexible; and most of all, as with other fiscally neutral policies it doesn't bring in any extra money. I've sat through three General Election Manifesto costings rounds, and a wholly fiscally neutral platform would be a disaster. Things like the ‘50p’ and the ‘1p’ weren't about clobbering people, nor even just about bringing in cash; the hypothecation gave us a financial credibility nothing else ever will. Basically, say "We'll cut bureaucracy" and no-one will ever believe you. Say, "We want this so much here is one specific tax that will pay for it," and people reckon it's true because they all know it’s brave.

Skip the italics if you’re not interested in my thoughts on environmental taxes, presented for the final and most strongly argued time (after earlier unsuccessful attempts) to the FPC for to a discussion of our finances in October 2004:

There is one issue in particular that I am concerned we must resolve. Our attitude that, aside from the 50% rate on earnings over £100,000, our tax changes are revenue-neutral, should make us relatively flameproof, but there is one area where that message is not as clear as it must be. The derision the Tories have faced for claiming “We’ll give you tax cuts, but we won't tell you what they are” means we must not hoist ourselves on the same petard...

There is one issue on which we must press for clarity. At present, we envisage a range of environmental taxes which will all be offset by corresponding tax reductions elsewhere, leaving the whole package fiscally neutral. This is a well-established and effective policy direction, but as yet we have not identified the taxes we would cut. This “We'll tell you the pain, but not the gain” approach is missing an open goal, and is increasingly reckless as the election approaches. In the past, this has always been a contentious issue, but tended to be resolved in favour of reducing NICs. With our policy now to earmark National Insurance for the NHS*, we have firmly denied ourselves that option.

My preference instead would be to resurrect a '90s policy that has fallen by the wayside purely for lack of funds: sharply increasing allowances, to benefit all ordinary taxpayers and take the lowest earners out of tax altogether. It is an obvious complement to our 50% top rate policy, in defence of which we point out that the highest-paid 20% have a tax rate of 35% to the lowest-earning 20%'s effective marginal rate of 40%.

However, whatever tax reductions we call for, we must decide on them - or press Vince to decide them - very swiftly in order to establish the message with our campaigners. We would be deluding ourselves, and ignoring attacks which have already been already circulated, if we believe that “We'll cut some taxes too, but, um, er, we're not sure which ones” is going to be a sufficient answer on either the doorstep or Newsnight.

We never did decide which taxes to cut, of course, which was an opportunity thrown away in the last General Election. Even if I don’t end up voting for Chris, I’m grateful he’s made a start.

*That reminds me. Earmarking National Insurance was a brilliant wheeze from something called the Huhne Commission, of which you may have heard. It resembles several other brilliant wheezes being widely trailed at the moment, and was adopted by the FPC because the Campaigns Department begged us to, saying how sexy and saleable it was. You may not remember that ‘headline’ policy now, as it was later dumped by order of the Campaigns Department, because it was impossible to sell. Hmm…

The other policy issue for me is that it feels very individual – which reads well, but makes me worry that it’s just one person wanting to write the party’s entire programme. Both Paddy and Charles had their advantages for policy as Leader (a crude characterisation would be King Stork and King Log), but Chris’ attention to the minutiae comes across as a bit too prescriptive. Paddy was brilliant in many ways, but I remember him treating every policy issue as a fight to the death, which wasn't a healthy way to run the Policy Committee. Unlike Ming’s, Chris' is a campaign that would benefit from having more of a team to it, and from making lots of moves about consulting the party.

So after all that, what would make me likely to support Chris? Keep plugging your policies – they got you there in the first place. But do more of the ‘vision thing’ than tying yourself to every specific, or you’ll carry on sounding mechanical and potentially dictatorial. Relax a bit more. Move your face. Sad to say, the time I got the most positive feel from you on TV was launching your campaign at the National Liberal Club, surrounded by women wearing very vivid colours. Vivid colour is what you’re missing. Instead of promoting yourself as ‘the man’, make it more of a team – if you aren’t charismatic, borrow it. If you’re going to win, lighten up. Get people to tickle you under the table during Question Time if you have to, but show you’re human, for goodness’ sake.

Labels: Leaders' Debate, Liberal Democrats, Paddy Ashdown

Simon Hughes for Leader? He’s got the most Parliamentary experience, he’s fluent and passionate, and he seems to have unbounded energy. He’s probably the best constituency MP in Britain. At his best, he’s the only candidate whose speeches have previously inspired me with his vision, and his credibility on the environment (perhaps the most important issue for us to make our own) is unrivalled. He’s committed to bringing in people who haven’t previously supported us. He’s the candidate I’ve seen most of over the years, and, personally, I like him. So what’s my problem with him? ‘Judgement’, in a word.

I’ve found this one much more difficult to write than the last, because I know and like Simon, rather than judging him coldly. So I’ve let myself be distracted by the splendid Technicolor plotting of The Prisoner of Zenda in the background, and it’s taken longer than I was expecting. Here goes…

My big problem with Simon has always been the “Oh, Simon!” factor. I used this term when explaining why I couldn’t give him my first preference back in 1999, and I’ve noticed other bloggers using similar words as headlines this time. I use it to express the way in which so many people who’ve known him for any period of time will become so aghast at his sheer flakiness that they feel the urge to grasp him by the shoulders and shake him, exploding “Oh, Simon!” A friend of mine told me one of the really big frustrations about this leadership election was desperately wanting to enthusiastically support a Hughes leadership bid - but not actually being able to do so. That hits the nail on the head. He’s simply not as credible as Ming. And that’s not because I’ve read it in The Guardian; it’s because I’ve seen them both in operation.

I know that my instincts are often in tune with Simon’s. I’m just not confident that I’ll know where his instincts will be taking him from day to day. On policy, coalitions, his disturbingly top-down attitude to party organisation and much else, the problem with Simon is that I’ve just heard him being so inconsistent, so often, that I fear what hostages to fortune we’ll be left with. On Any Questions with Ming and Chris, I thought he won hands down in terms of performance, but he also gave the most scarily unpredictable answers. I’ve seen Simon on the Federal Policy Committee over the years, and worry.

On ID cards, to take one example, he’s roused the troops by promising he’d rather go to prison than carry one – but has frequently said he’s got no problem with a ‘voluntary’ card. He was one of those who insisted we water down our opposition with the word ‘compulsory’ for the 2001 Manifesto (check it against the line in 1997 to see how mealy-mouthed it is). It’s an attempt to sound moderate that’s merely naïve, and that’s not unusual for him. Even the Government claims ID cards will be ‘voluntary’ for 10 years, but it’s merely to smooth the way of the compulsory cards to follow, and still means you’ll need a multi-billion-pound National Identity Register, and there are many people for whom they won’t be voluntary at all. If you want a passport, or a driving licence, they’ll be compulsory. If you’re on benefits. If you’re a young black guy, driving the wrong sort of car. If you live in a poor area and want to write a cheque or rent a video. It’s already socially excluded people in places like Bermondsey that will be hit hardest by the so-called ‘voluntary’ ID card. It’s no compromise at all, and it’s the epitome of Simon simply not thinking things through.

In party organisation, he has grand ambitions and no idea of how to fulfil them. Take the London mayoral campaigns. Then unknown Susan Kramer won 12% of the vote as London Mayor. With higher opinion poll ratings, more name recognition, more media attention, more money and the gilt off Ken after his first term, Simon won just 15% four years later. Facing a more anti-establishment candidate, Simon couldn’t even run as Livingstone Lite, but as a policy-free zone. He shares with me the unfortunate distinction of having been a failure as President of the Lib Dem Youth and Students, in his case by picking sides at a time when the organisation was split and badly needed a unifier. As President of the party, most of the way through his term of office there’s been no growth in our membership, despite his aim of overtaking Labour; and I can’t be the only Liberal Democrat worried by his decision to just appoint a bunch of Deputy Presidents, without elections or even a constitution. If Leader or Prime Minister, what makes that different to charges of ‘Simon’s Cronies’? As it happens, I like most of them; but in a democracy, that’s not the point.

His speeches are both famous and infamous. When he’s on form, he puts across what we stand for superbly. He can be charismatic, passionate and uplifting. But he’s also the only candidate who’s given a speech I’ve sat through that was so long and rambling that several members of his audience fell asleep. I’ve never forgotten the Liberal Revue sketch of the party as ‘Allo ‘Allo: in through the window comes ‘Ughes, of the Resistance. “Listen very carefully – I shall say this only 47 times.” When you never know from speech to speech whether what he’ll say will be uplifting, bonkers or so monumentally tedious that by the end of the forty-seventh point you still have no more idea of what he’s saying than when he opened his mouth, he’s a bit of a gamble (people might say the same about me, but fortunately for all concerned I’m not standing). I will defend his famous lateness, though, another unfortunate tendency I share: when I was a Parliamentary candidate, I remember being dragged roughly out of a meeting by my driver to make sure I got to the next one. Leader’s aides are more than capable of doing the same for Simon, so I don’t believe it’d be a problem.

On the bright side, I do think he’s the only candidate untainted by the downfall of Charles, though he still didn’t exactly cover himself in glory. I don’t believe he did any plotting; the spectacle of him equivocating uselessly on Channel 4 News the night of Charles’ announcement about his alcoholism was so painfully self-defeating it can only have been honest. Not that that’s the most outstanding example recently of Simon being painfully naïve and self-defeating. Of course The Sun was vile, back almost to its ‘80s level of homophobia, and almost the whole rest of the press have been unforgivably horrendous. I know it can’t have been easy, but it’s gobsmacking that he’d had all this time and not thought of a proper answer. I feel huge sympathy for Simon, who’s genuinely nice and rock-solid on gay rights. But I can’t help feeling exasperated too.

Simon’s decision to obscure the issue with a technically truthful but misleading remark that he wasn’t gay was astounding in a politics after “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”; that he told The Sun rather than just going public to everyone else when The Sun tried to fling mud at him was breathtakingly naïve. Did he really expect careful handling from arguably the most viciously homophobic and viciously anti-Lib Dem paper in the country? And days later, he was still refusing to use the label ‘bisexual’ to explain why he hadn’t lied, with every news outlet reporting the ‘fact’ that he was a liar, because (in his own words) he didn’t want to be labelled. Sorry, Simon; once you’re public about something that can be labelled, either you choose a label or someone else will choose it for you. He wasn’t mendacious – just clueless and woefully lacking in judgement. Simon has said since that this was a leadership test. Sorry, Simon – the test wasn’t whether you could stand up to the storm once you’d been stupid enough to set it off. It was whether you had the elementary nous to see the storm coming, or whether you’d just say the first thing that came into your head. And you flunked it. I often worry that Simon’s wish to bring religion and ‘faith groups’ more into politics is a slippery slope for a party of individual freedom; it takes rare talent to mishandle something so badly that both the religious and the lesbian, gay and bisexual constituencies think you’ve let them down. A Leader has to realise that not everyone will want to believe the best of you, and know how to explain things so that they do.

So after all that, what would make me likely to support Simon? How do you recapture ‘good judgment’ in one bound? Well, try this. Talk about the big picture and make people feel good about what things could be like with the Liberal Democrats. Make people believe, and don’t do the details for now: stop making up policy and organisation on the hoof. Say we’re a democratic party and you’re there to proclaim its message. Don’t believe you’re always right and people will always understand. Listen to advice, and take it. And don’t overcompensate for the press saying ‘the Lib Dems are losing’; stop talking about landslides and talk about building from our local roots – sound plausible, not laughably optimistic. A huge number of councillors are backing you, so don’t just use them as ‘supporters’. If you’re going to win, it’ll be because you can embody the party. Sound like the Leader of a force that’s credible in councils across the country, and sing the vision thing that unites them all. If you open your mouth without thinking and speak only for yourself, you’ll be left on your own.

Labels: Leaders' Debate, Liberal Democrats