Standing easy

I’m giving this blog a rest for a short while. With the Lib Dem leadership race about to get underway, my role as commissioning editor for Liberal Democrat Voice is going to keep me quite busy enough (while also holding down a full-time job and being a councillor).

Doubtless I’ll be back at some stage, though it’s unlikely this time I will declare for any particular candidate.

I recorded a short interview for BBC Radio 5Live’s Pods and Blogs show, reflecting on Ming’s departure, which was broadcast at 2am this morning. If for some reason you weren’t finding yourself insomniac, you can listen to it here (I’m on pretty much at the beginning).

For Ming, with thanks

Yesterday was a sad day for the Liberal Democrats; but in particular for Ming Campbell, a good, decent, honourable man, and someone who - if politics and life were fairer - could have proved to be a highly effective leader. But, in truth, he never looked comfortable in the job. For a gent whose attire is always immaculately tailored, the suit of leadership hung awkwardly on his frame.

The early comparisons being made are with Iain Duncan Smith; but that is to underestimate Ming’s contribution, which was more akin to Michael Howard - a man who professionalized his party’s operation, and steadied the ship at a difficult time. Both men are perhaps too shy to find it easy either to give or receive warmth. But they earned the deep respect, if not always affection, of their parties.

It would be unnatural if Ming did not reflect with some bitterness on the mauling he has been subjected to by the gutter press (which is pretty much all of it these days); and perhaps also with the party which listened too closely to that press. In the circumstances, Ming had little option but to resign if he wished to preserve his dignity. His swift decision was, nonetheless, a brave one: to admit failure is the hardest thing in life. But it is entirely in keeping with his outlook on life that it was not one he shirked.

Public life is the poorer for his departure.

How should we respond to the media speculation?

For the conspiracy theorists among you, the fact that Lib Dem Voice has crashed on the same day as it is cited by both The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph as fuelling the pressure faced by party leader, Ming Campbell, might be just too much.

I have my own theory: the LDV servers have revolted at the misnaming of the website by both those august journals as Liberal Voice. I would have thought both the name and the url of the website would be enough for even the most slapdash and obtuse of journalists to be able to get it right. Which is a ripe lesson for me never to underestimate their incapacity.

It might also be of course that the servers have - if you believe the Torygraph report, which has since been shamelessly plagiarised by the Grauniad - become overloaded thanks to Lib Dem members “swamping” the site with anti-Ming Campbell comments:

unease has spread to the party's grassroots who have swamped Liberal Voice, the most popular supporters' website, with messages demanding the resignation of Sir Menzies.

The Torygraph’s facile Andrew Pierce is clearly reading a different website to the one I help edit. Yes, there have been messages calling on Ming to resign. They are, I would estimate (and with the site down I can’t currently check), in a clear minority and number no more than half a dozen. This may count as “swamping” if you’re writing in a Tory paper to stir up a bit of political excitement now a general election is off the agenda.

Still, at least Pierce came up with an original story. Factually flimsy, but still. The Guardian’s Hélène Mulholland doesn’t even have that excuse. Not only does she flagrantly rip-off the Torygraph piece, Hélène then has the bare-faced cheek to write:

Chatter about Sir Menzies's leadership overshadowed last month's annual conference in Brighton.

Wrong, Hélène. The only chatter about Sir Menzies’s leadership I heard was along the lines, “Why won’t the press report what’s happening here instead of banging on about Ming’s leadership all the time?”

In short, the press is talking rubbish with such casual concern for the facts that it scarcely counts as journalism at all.

And yet, and yet… As I posted on Lib Dem Voice this week, for Lib Dems to complain about the media’s pathetic press coverage is, at the moment, beside the point. The media has made up its mind: Ming must go. They will refuse point-blank to be interested in any other story, unless the party’s (and Ming’s) poll ratings perk up, and quickly.

We can moan about this all we like, and yes, it’s unfair. But that’s the situation and we’ve got to work out our response to it, or else endure another 18 months (or whatever) of the only occasions we gain any national media exposure being when the press reports speculation about Ming’s future.

It is no longer enough for Ming, or anyone else, simply to try and deflect the question, and state that Ming’s the elected leader, and he’s here to stay up to and beyond the next election. That the question is being asked is inflicting damage on the party, and becomes self-perpetuating: if the only times the public hears about the Lib Dems is because the press is reporting a leadership crisis is in itself a problem.

We cannot be a captive of the media agenda: I do not believe Ming’s leadership should be ended because the press is playing silly buggers. Journalists are already self-important enough in their belief that they can make the political weather without the Lib Dems offering them a sacrificial lamb in the hope they might actually bother to do their job and report on the state of the party fairly and objectively.

But, equally, it is no good closing our eyes and ears, and pretending all this nonsense will just go away if we ignore it. The vultures of the Fourth Estate are circling. For the good of the party, the uncertainty cannot be allowed to continue. The onus is on our MPs, I think. A letter signed by all 62 of Ming’s Commons’ colleagues expressing full support for Ming as leader is the very least that's needed. If they’re not prepared to do that, they have to work out what they are prepared to do.

Meltdown in meltdown shocker

Just nine days ago (seems a lifetime) it was Cameron who was in ‘meltdown’ (The Observer). Today it’s Team Gordon who are in ‘meltdown’ (ConHome).

Other current ‘meltdown’ news items include:

• the hunt for Madeleine McCann (The Sun),
• the US subprime collapse (Daily Telegraph),
• Amy Winehouse (Showbizspy.com),
• Royal Mail deliveries in Coventry (icCoventry.co.uk), and
• Northern Rock (FTAdviser).

To name but a few.

Please can lazy sub-editors borrow a thesaurus, and try out a new cliché?

Is Gordon Brown really all that?

Talk about a week being a long time in politics. If Gordon Brown had the courage to match his opportunism today would mark the beginning of the second week of an autumn ’07 general election campaign.

Phew, say Lib Dems and Tories

And both the Lib Dems and Tories would be more than a bit worried for a very good reason: neither party is yet ready to face an election. Why should they be? After all, we’re just half-way through the full Parliamentary term.

Of course, party politics being the Neverland it is, both Ming Campbell and David Cameron have felt compelled to declare resoundingly, ‘Bring it on’, in order to avoid the charge of unmanly cowardice. What does it say about the political health of a nation when we expect politicians to tell untruths?

It would have been declared a major gaffe, or be pounced on as running scared if either Ming or Dave had told it as it is: “Look, we’re just not ready yet. The manifesto’s only half-written, and we’ve still got to find candidates for some potentially winnable seats (let alone all the others). Give us another year, then we’ll be good to go.”

But Gordon, rather kindly, chose not to put us on the spot. As is often the case in politics, the right decision was taken for entirely the wrong reasons. Gordon wasn’t bothered that springing a snap poll on the public while the main opposition parties are under-prepared was in any way a tardy way to behave in a supposedly mature democracy. He was concerned that he might not win. Something tells me that concern is one he needs to get used to.

Gordon - from zero to hero and back again?

I only caught a glimpse of Gordon’s press conference today, via The Guardian website. Given that this extract, focusing on the reason for delaying an election, is one the Prime Minister will have practised, it is dreadful stuff - waffly, insincere and dull. True blue Tory Danny Finkelstein has drafted the text Gordon should have used, and made a much better job of sounding both statesmanlike and believable - here’s how it begins:

Yes, I considered calling an election. And here's why. There are two options for a new Prime Minister. Asking voters for their trust in advance, or waiting until new policies have had a chance to work. I have been thinking about both these possibilities.
The polls were a large part of this. They have shown that people are enthusiastic, keen to back my vision for change. And that made me think hard about the idea of winning a fresh mandate which might make it easier to get Parliamentary backing for some of our most controversial ideas, ideas like reform of the Lords.
But the polls have also been volatile. They show that, quite understandably, the enthusiasm is accompanied by uncertainty. That uncertainty reflects the fact that people want to hear the arguments and see the change before they vote.

Gordon’s recent performance has recalled to my mind an article I wrote on this blog last year, looking at the often-forgotten part of the Gordon biography, the years 1992-94, when he went from being the obvious successor to John Smith to obvious bridesmaid to Tony Blair:

For all the controversy of the so-called ‘Granita Pact’, when Mr Blair and Mr Brown are supposed to have reached concord that Mr Blair would be the modernising candidate, there is one simple reason why Mr Brown sat on his hands: Mr Blair would have beaten him.

To understand why this was so, let me quote from Nicholas Jones’s excellent 1996 tome, Soundbites & Spin Doctors:

Aware of criticism that his delivery could be stilted and that he sometimes had a wooden appearance, Brown went to inordinate lengths to inject vitality into his answers. During a hectic round of interviews in the week of the 1992 autumn spending statement, a television studio technician observed the care with which he practised what was obviously the key sentence of his reply, repeating it a dozen times before deciding which words should get more emphasis. Such assiduity had its disadvantages: once he had memorised a soundbite, Brown had a tendency to keep repeating it whatever the subsequent questions. Some programme editors grew reluctant to accept his contributions, claiming they were predictable and repetitive. For a time, producers on the BBC’s One o‘Clock News were told to do their utmost to find other Labour voices: Brown was considered to have become over-exposed.

The appointment of Charlie Whelan as his press officer in January 1994 curbed the worst of Mr Brown’s media obsession. But John Smith’s untimely death triggered a leadership contest at the worst possible time for Mr Brown. As Mr Jones records:

… although [Mr Whelan] had gone some way towards repairing the damage to the shadow Chancellor’s reputation, the leadership contest reopened the debate about Brown’s addiction to soundbites. As the party started assessing the value of the likely contenders, there were powerful voices in the Labour hierarchy who said Brown was too lightweight to become leader.

A lightweight leader addicted to soundbites, eh? Up with that, Labour would never put.

Matthew Parris put his finger on it (as so often) last month when Gordon was riding high:

I keep saying this – but the man hasn’t got the ghost of a plan. Not an idea in his head. Anyone with ears to hear could guess as much from his speech and media interviews on Monday. “Citizens’ juries” across the country to advise the Government on policy? Spare us. Why doesn’t he advise the Government? He’s the Prime Minister.
What leaps from Mr Brown’s interviews is not the intellectual colossus that some of my Fleet Street colleagues describe, but an ambitious school bursar with a powerful ego, a good head for figures and a big gap in his brain where a creative political imagination ought to be. Mr Brown interviews like a frightened man, desperate to bore and bulldoze his way through 15 minutes without saying anything.

The Tories made the critical mistake in the summer of underestimating Gordon Brown’s tactical shrewdness. Until last week, he had inflicted grievous punishment on them for their complacency.

Labour has made the critical mistake of believing the hype about Gordon, imagining he can carry all before him on the assumption the country is as docile as the party. The last week has exposed the limits of Gordon’s prowess.

The expectations' see-sore

It all changes so, so quickly.

Five months ago, David Cameron was riding high, following some pretty decent local election results. Tony Blair, New Labour’s election talisman was soon to depart, and be replaced by the ever-grumpy, and supposedly vote-haemmorhaging, Gordon Brown.

And then Mr Brown took over, and confounded the Tories’ worst hopes.

Though most people would be hard-pressed to name anything significant that he’s achieved as Prime Minister - I’m afraid I don’t count being on watch during crises over which you have little or no control (foot-and-mouth), or for which you are partly responsible for (Northern Rock) - he has successfully managed not to be Mr Blair. And, frankly, that’s all the country wanted, just as Margaret Thatcher’s replacement with John Major lifted the Tories almost 17 years ago.

The media has, as is their wont, over-interpreted this mood of relief, and ascribed to it more significance than it deserves. The ‘Brown bounce’ is likely prove to be just that: a temporary and limited surge in Labour’s popularity which owes much to the Prime Minister’s current novelty value.

However, the media’s exuberance appears also to have gripped New New Labour’s high command, which has refused to kill off speculation that a snap election will be announced in a matter of days. As a result, serious politics has taken a back-seat while the parties take pot-shots at each other during this phoney war.

Perhaps Mr Brown was hoping the Tory party conference in Blackpool this week, should it prove a disaster, would help make up his mind. If so, he’ll have been sadly disappointed - whatever you think of the Tories, it’s clear they’ve had a good enough week.

By which I mean, they haven’t fallen into their usual traps of publicly displaying either chronic disloyalty to their leader, or self-indulgent rants from barking mad regiments of retired colonel-types taking their prejudices for a walk. Even if they did make the mistake of letting Liam Fox remind everyone exactly why all Lib Dem and Labour supporters would just love him to become Tory leader.

The Tories have, therefore, successfully achieved just what Mr Brown did in the summer: they have countered the low expectations set for them by the media, such as the risible headline The Observer splashed on its front page, Cameron faces poll meltdown. (If editors of the supposedly more serious newspapers are ever kept awake by their falling circulations, and wonder why the public chooses to shun their product, they would do well to ponder the dumbed-down, hyped-up sensationalism of their front pages.)

All of which leaves Mr Brown in a quandary: damned if he does call an election, and damned if he doesn’t.

Because, make no mistake, to go to the polls now is a huge gamble. How will the public react to being forced to endure a month’s politicking followed by a trip to the polling station in cold, damp, miserable weather?

Some polls suggest the electorate is up for it, ready, willing and able to bound down to their nearest polling station, and mark their cross. Well, perhaps. But Mr Brown should know better than to trust polls which ask hypothetical questions: after all, if they were at all a useful predictor, he wouldn’t now be enjoying his currently high popularity ratings.

I won’t be foolish enough to predict the result of a November election, if one happens - but I will predict that turnout would be down, which in itself would scarcely amount to a ringing endorsement of Mr Brown’s mandate to govern.

Even if he wins, he must win big enough - at least a majority of 40, or his credibility will take a real bashing (and he will find himself at the mercy of the left-wing Campaign Group of Labour MPs). It will only take the smallest of swings away from Labour to see Mr Brown’s majority vanish, and with it his authority and grip on his premiership.

And as for the ignominious prospect of defeat, joining the ranks of the shortest-serving Prime Ministers of this country… well, that thought is the one which is doubtless paralysing Mr Brown even now. To squander a majority of 69 for the sake of the personal hubristic vanity of winning an election in your own right - suddenly all the warnings which the Blairites had whispered in the years leading up to Mr Brown’s accession would seem eerily prophetic.

Which is why Mr Brown might still decide to flunk it, to decide against calling an election, and ride his luck at least until the spring. The whispers I’m hearing from Team Brown is that they have yet finally to make up their mind. The current favoured option is 8th November, announced next week. But who knows?

There would be lots of good reasons for Mr Brown to postpone. Yet it would be seen as a climb-down, an humiliating admission, rooted in careful calculation, that he can’t win at the moment. In an instant, political momentum would swing away from Mr Brown, and towards his opponents.

At which point, the media and the public might just begin to think: for a country-before-party, ‘big tent’-loving statesman, Mr Brown doesn’t half seem to devote an unseemly amount of time to promoting his own personal political interests.

Losing our Marples

Say what you like about ITV1’s updated Marple - and many have - the cast list is OTT-ly stellar. I’m especially intrigued by their decision to work their way through the entire cast list of Green Wing.

Last week it was Stephen Mangan (Dr Guillaume 'Guy' Valerie Secretan in GW; Inspector Bird in Marple), and Mark Heap (Dr Alan Statham; Mr Humfries). Last night it was the turn of Julian Rhind-Tutt (Dr 'Mac' Macartney; Dr Calgary) and Pippa Haywood (Joanna Clore; Mrs Price).

In his review last year, Jonathan Calder lauded the BBC’s Joan Hickson version of Miss Marple: “an impeccable performance set off by a frequently immaculate supporting cast and sensetive direction. And Geraldine McEwan's is a lesser performance which is often hindered by the setting in which it has been placed.”

I cannot disagree with him about Joan Hickson’s portrayal: she is Miss Marple. Which is, of course, why ITV was quite right not to try and replicate what had gone before. Where I do part company with Jonathan is about the production values of the BBC adaptations, which are very much of their time, and therefore (whisper it gently) rather dull.

Having absolutely loved the Hickson Marples as a child, I was distressed to catch a couple of them recently, and discover quite how torturously ponderous the script and direction is. By comparison, the ITV versions are slick, pacy and glowing with irony.

Which might not be to your taste, of course. But, just as theatrical productions of timeless pieces can vary, I don’t see why telly shouldn’t feel free to update itself for a new generation.

Bloglash (n.)

Last week’s publication of Iain Dale’s list of the top 500 UK political blogs has sparked some criticism - the funniest is here at mediocracy (hat-tip: Tim Worstall), the most acute is here at Stumbling and Mumbling:

… there's something nasty about the very notion that blogs can be ranked on a simple single ordering. The overwhelming virtue of the blogosphere is its diversity. And the many things that make a good blog are to some extent incompatible; originality versus consistency; passion versus intellectual rigour; number of posts versus quality of individual posts; brevity versus weight of evidence; wit versus gravitas, and so on.

These trade-offs mean the quality of blogs is just incommensurable - we can't rank them. … And even if we can each rank our own preferences, what meaning is there to an aggregate ranking? To pretend there is one is to commit the error that libertarians have often accused utilitarians of making - of believing preferences can be easily aggregated when they cannot be. It's symptomatic of the intellectual decline of the Conservative party that one of its cheerleaders should make this error.

Stephen Tall is 55th.

Tease shirt

A quick plug for Progresswear.com, who have just despatched my latest item of clothing - a T-shirt with this legend...

That’s one to wear on 18 Doughty Street next time I appear.

Iain's little list

Iain Dale has now published the official list of the top 100 Lib Dem blogs, and I’m runner-up - and I can think of few bloggers against whom I’m more happy to run up than Jonathan Calder’s Liberal England. He is indeed the Lib Dem blogfather.

Here’s what Iain wrote about me, myself and I:

Stephen Tall has emerged in the last twelve months as a key player in the Liberal Democrat blogosphere. His own A Liberal Goes a Long Way blog won last year’s Liberal Democrat blog of the year, awarded by the Libdems at their party conference, and he has become a familiar face as the LibDem blogger who most appears on the media. Recently he has taken over as commissioning editor of LibDem Voice, which, it is to be hoped, does not see a decline in his own blog. Stephen is not one to write short snappy posts. He has an erudite, if sometimes academic, style, which means that his posts have a clear beginning, middleand end. He’s a blogger who makes the reader think about their own position on an issue, and you can hardly pay a higher compliment than that.

It is of course more than possible that my involvement with Lib Dem Voice has seen a decline in the quality of both blogs.

One of the chapters which appears in Iain’s eponymous Guide To Political Blogging In The UK is written by me, and focuses on the state of Lib Dem blogging. Or, perhaps more accurately, looks at the state of blogging through a Lib Dem prism. (Sorry, Iain - are references to geometric shapes too academic?)

Anyway, if you want to buy it, you can do so by clicking on this Amazon link - in which case you’ll earn the Lib Dems some commission, an irony I’m sure Iain will enjoy.

***

The state of Lib Dem blogging in the UK

Anyone still harbouring the hackneyed view that Liberal Democrats are a bunch of equivocating well-on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other nicebodies, who wouldn’t say boo to an organic free-range goose, should visit www.libdemblogs.co.uk.

There you will find aggregated each day for your reading pleasure the opinionated postings of over 130 Lib Dems, displaying a frenetic range of topic, content and style. Punchy op-ed commentary on the big national and international issues of the day nestles alongside tales of potholes, pedestrian crossings and planning applications in Coketown.

It is emblematic of Lib Dem thinking that this should be so: the local and global are too intrinsically intertwined for it not to be. Indeed, the Lib Dem blogs ‘Aggregator’ is itself a signature of liberalism: diverse individual thinking finding strengthened expression through a collective community venture.

A year ago, at our 2006 conference in Brighton, the Lib Dems became the first national party to recognise the blogging fraternity - and it is a fraternity; the scarcity of women unhealthily skews the blogosphere - launching an inaugural ‘Blog of the Year’ award, which earned national media coverage.

But, in fact, it was eight months earlier that Lib Dem blogs first made their mark, during the leadership contest sparked by Charles Kennedy’s resignation. The momentum and profile of initial-outsider Chris Huhne’s campaign was boosted by declarations of support from some leading Lib Dem bloggers, inspiring a ‘Bloggers for Huhne’ section on his campaign website. Ever since, the party has taken increasing time and effort to reach out to bloggers - not simply through the awards ceremony, but also by giving access to press conferences, and interviews with senior MPs, such as Ed Davey and Ming Campbell.

Does this present a danger to those of us who blog? Should we be concerned that, as the party seeks to embrace us, we’ll become smothered? Clearly that’s a risk, but then any new phenomenon is laden with risks. Bloggers who compromise themselves, who sacrifice their authentic independence for the vicarious thrill of being among the favoured élite, lose their credibility - as those who read, and post to, their blogs will be swift to point out.

Besides, the Lib Dems are not that kind of party. I recall the media office phoning to say they had suggested Sky News contact me for a vox pop following a controversial conference vote. “Is there a particular line the party wants to get across?” I asked. (I wasn’t offering to be their patsy, but I thought I’d find out just the same.) “It’s entirely up to you; they want to hear from someone a bit independent,” came the reply. So much for Svengalian spin-doctors: Peter Mandelson would have been turning in his Euro-gravy.

In any case, those of us who sit at a computer should beware of turning into Mr Pooter. It is easy to exaggerate the importance of blogs, their novelty perhaps obscuring the fact that they remain a niche. Even the über-blogs, like Iain Dale’s and Guido Fawkes’, attract around 250,000 unique visitors each month. Yes, it’s impressive… but that’s the same number as pay for their copy of The Independent, the UK’s lowest circulation national newspaper, each and every day. (The nearest comparison for my blog is probably the Biggleswade Chronicle.)

Perhaps the biggest function which blogs perform is the influence they are beginning to exert on the mainstream media. Blogging is prime retail for journalists: it is an easy and unending source of news stories and diary snippets. To politicians, this can spell either manna from heaven, or gaffes from hell.

In the former camp, resides Lynne Featherstone, the Lib Dem MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, who ousted the Labour incumbent at the 2005 general election with a huge 14.6 per cent swing. Alongside the usual hard slog of ‘pavement politics’, and a formidably well-organised campaign, her profile was pepped up by her sparky, feisty blog. The outspoken blog of Welsh Assembly member Peter Black has earned him copious media coverage, especially in the febrile weeks after May’s inconclusive election results, as he chronicled the twists and turns of the coalition negotiations.

But it doesn’t always work to the good. When Jody Dunn, the Lib Dem candidate in the 2004 Hartlepool by-election, blogged that she had canvassing a street whose residents were “either drunk, flanked by an ugly dog, or undressed”, Labour made the most of her quip, and clung on to the seat.

Perhaps it is because the rewards do not yet outweigh the risks that few Lib Dem Parliamentarians are bloggers. In addition to Lynne, only three MPs have so far been taken by the blogging muse - John Hemming, Adrian Sanders and Steve Webb [and now Sandra Gidley has resumed her blog, too, making four] – as well as two MEPs, Sajjad Karim and Graham Watson, and one peer, Lord Eric Avebury.

Yet alongside this understandable caution, there may be at least as much prioritisation. Elected representatives, at local or national level, may well ponder if blogging is the best use of their campaigning time - compared, say, to producing regular newsletters delivered through every door, or holding surgeries for residents, or simply ensuring they’re keeping on top of their casework. After all, it’s likely your blog will be read chiefly by the cognoscenti in your patch, both your supporters and your opponents. If you’re serious about winning votes you need to be in touch with precisely those people who are least likely casually to surf their way to your blog, and even less likely to read your latest, learned disquisitions on the EU treaty referendum, or the need for electoral reform.

The lesson is simple (the best lessons usually are): blog if you want to, not because you feel you have to. If you find it a chore, and resent the time it takes, your apathy will seep through the screen. It is the enthusiasm of the top bloggers - their drive to connect with their readers - which makes them work.

And if you have that passion, your blog can become a powerful campaigning tool; or it can simply be your space to re-cast your half-formed thoughts into something semi-coherent for public consumption. Either way, fasten your seatbelts, prepare for take-off, and welcome to the Lib Dem blogosphere.

***

Brighton photo diary, Day 3

One of the things non-party members (who usually go by the name, ‘normal people’) are most curious about is what those of us who go actually do at a Lib Dem party conference.

Usually it’s a heady mix of full-on policy debates (so much more exciting if there’s a knife-edge vote which could defeat the leadership), fringe meetings (which the more ambitious MPs will attend half a dozen or more), and enjoying the company of folk you meet perhaps just once a year.

This year, there was an extra treat: a candidates’ hust for the three Lib Dems who are vying to be the party’s choice to take on Ken and Boris in the ’08 London mayoral election.

In a jam-packed lecture theatre at lunch-time today, Chamali Fernando, Fiyaz Mughal and Brian Paddick (in order of appearance) strutted their funky stuff, giving a 5-minute speech, before being quizzed by chair, Susan Kramer, herself an erstwhile Lib Dem mayoral candidate back in 2000.

Chamali fired off an absolutely cracking speech, fizzing with dynamic vigour; Fiyaz displayed an easy and commanding grasp of policies, communicated with real confidence; while Brian brimmed over with liberal camaraderie and humour, wooing an audience more than willing to be wooed with a beguiling mix of charm and calm (I guess he’s had to face tougher crowds in his life).

Like everyone else, I’m assuming Brian is a shoo-in for the Lib Dem nomination. In which case on the basis of today’s performance he will - win or lose (and he could win, you know) - do the party proud. But both Chamali and Fiyaz will do themselves and their future career prospects a power of good by continuing to make such a good contest of it.

I’m writing this on my way back from Brighton… work calls tomorrow, so this is my final photo diary direct from the front-line:

Brighton photo diary, Day 2

There’s a slightly odd mood surrounding the conference.

It’s a combination, I guess, of the ‘will he, won’t he’ general election speculation that Gordon Brown has allowed his spin-doctors to fuel, which inevitably makes for nervous excitement - only partly quelled by most people’s best guess that he won’t.

And also a sense of frustration, to which we Lib Dems have had to become accustomed, with the media for focusing on Ming Campbell’s leadership, and pretending that’s what the delegates are discussing.

The vast, vast majority are happy/reconciled to Ming leading the party through the next general election; a small minority, including a couple of our peers who should know much better, are happy to feed the media beast in return for having their tummies tickled.

Anyway, if you want to keep pace with what is actually happening in Brighton, check out the Lib Dem blogs Aggregator, and Lib Dem Voice.

Meanwhile, here are some pretty pictures from the conference hall, including yesterday's Q&A between Ming and Sandi Toksvig, and the speech by European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso:

Brighton Photo Diary, Day 1

Sorry, too busy to be erudite right now. Here, instead, are a couple of photos taken at last night’s conference rally, Human rights and civil liberties: home and abroad, where Ming made a good, passionate speech. (Even if no-one was too sure for a couple of seconds that he’d actually finished.)

If you’ve ever wondered what the view of conference is like from the back of the hall, here it is:



























And, then, last night I had the very great pleasure of hosting the second annual Lib Dem Blog of the Year awards, run by Lib Dem Voice in conjunction with the national party.

Some very good winners, and some just as good runners-up.

The overall Best Lib Dem blog trophy went to James Graham’s robust but eminently sane creation, Quaequam Blog!.

I snatched an interview with him at lunch-time, which you can watch here:

London Brighton calling

Time was, a trip to London on the Oxford Tube (actually a bus) meant 1.5 hours of seclusion from the internet, time to sit back and read, think or just zone out. No longer. It’s wifi-ed up, and I’m clinically incapable, it appears, of leaving my laptop be.

I’m en route to Brighton for the Lib Dem conference. Last year, I was a first-time rookie, and had carefully planned ahead exactly which conference debates and fringe meetings to attend. This year, I’m a two-time old-hander. Which means that I’m going to wing it, and see where I end up.

I may update this blog with my thoughts from Brighton. But chances are my time will be fully occupied by Liberal Democrat Voice, keeping pace both with the latest conference news and gossip, and the increasing number of submissions party members are sending in.

So, in the interim, are my two personal highs and lows from Brighton 2006, courtesy of YouTube:

Erm, thanks, I think

I’ve gone two better than Jonathan Calder, it seems - A Liberal Goes A Long Way is, according to Tory uber-blogger, Iain Dale, the most under-rated political blog in the UK. Which is either a rather sweet accolade, or a bit of a back-handed compliment, depending on how you look at it.

Iain suggests - and who am I to disagree? - that my gaff, and the other nine he lists “should be in the top echelons of any blogging list due to their consistently high quality of output, but don't get the attention they deserve.”

It’s true I certainly don’t have anything like the readership of Iain, Guido, Tim, Da Fink et al. Partly that’s because Lib Dem and liberal-leaning blogs have a smaller readership to begin with; it’s also, I suspect, because I don’t abide by the blogging maxim: a little and often. (Ironically enough, that was also my mum’s advice to us when we felt too ill to eat anything.)

I’m a fairly regular blogger, but my output is nowhere near as frenetic as my party colleagues, Nich, Paul or Jonathan himself. All the more so since I became commissioning editor at Lib Dem Voice, and started dividing my blogging time between the two.

It is, to an extent, a conscious decision. I love writing, but I only want to write about what I want to write about - I don’t ever want to feel compelled to write because of others’ expectations. Blogging should never become a tyranny.

And the trouble with building up a large readership is that your obligations start subtly to change. No longer are you thinking, “What do I want to get off my chest?” You start asking instead, “What will my readers be expecting from me?” Not my cup of tea, I’m afraid.

None of which is a dig at Iain. I’ve met him, I like him, I respect him. He has also been generous to me and other Lib Dem bloggers in promoting our endeavours to his massed army of readers (even if half of them are green-ink-smeared, right-wing weirdos).

That said, I was surprised when he was nominated as ‘political commentator of the year’ in the prestigious House Magazine / Sky News Parliamentary Awards earlier this year. Because Iain is not an objective analyst of the political world: he’s a partisan Tory who occasionally criticises his own party, and even more occasionally praises other parties. Nothing wrong with that. But let’s not confuse political commentary with campaigning agitprop.

I have a lot of admiration - genuinely - for those bloggers who respond instantly to the latest news stories with their visceral, gut reactions. But it isn’t for me (and here I add the word beloved by wriggling lawyers - normally). Just as I accept the need for rolling news coverage, but prefer to watch Newsnight.

This self-indulgent navel-gazing posting is, perhaps, emblematic of a Lib Dem mindset: the wish to stay aloof, exclusive, pure, rather than be bespoiled by the grubby compromises of mass popularity and responsibility. Or perhaps I’m just too lazy to commit to penning a minimum of three posts a day, and to the drudgery of adding reciprocal links across the blogosphere.

At any rate, I guess I’d rather be under-rated than over-rated. So thanks, Iain.

Oh, Ming - you could have said it so much better

You have to choose your words so carefully in politics. But, sometimes, you can choose them too carefully.

Ming Campbell went firmly on the record today to affirm his view that a referendum on the EU reform treaty was - in his words - “not necessary”. It was entirely the wrong way to make a perfectly valid point.

Why was he wrong?

Words matter. “Not necessary”. Jars a bit, doesn’t it? It’s an altogether too lawyerly phrase - because, of course, a referendum on the EU reform treaty isn’t necessary, any more than it was necessary to have a referendum on the Maastricht treaty... But, back in 1992, the Lib Dems campaigned for such a referendum just the same. It’s also - how can I put this? - a little bit patrician. Ming didn’t actually say, “Don’t worry your little heads about it, the grown-ups will sort this out,” but, frankly, he might as well have done.

Why was he right?

He’s got a point. A referendum would be a complete red herring, a painless way for the electorate to kick the EU in the shins without actually squaring up for the big fight - do we want in, or out? If the electorate said yes to the treaty - a slim possibility - it might quell the Tory right’s xenophobia for a short while; but it wouldn’t be long before they found another pretext for kicking up rough.

If the electorate said no… well, then what? Any bright ideas? Anyone got a clue what precisely it was we said no to? Of course not. All it would prove is that the British people are a bit narked with the EU at the minute. I think we can all work out that for ourselves without the need for a referendum.

What he should have said:

Ming was close. He actually had a good answer, concealed within his legalese: “if we were to have a referendum, then it is worth considering a more fundamental referendum, in a sense of being in or out.” I agree. But, oh, the vagueness! Oh, the conditional clauses! “If”, “worth considering”, “in a sense” - it was like Charlie Kennedy’s Second Coming.

He could have said it so much better:

“Those who call for a referendum on the EU reform treaty are disingenuous. It’s a complete red herring to pretend that such a limited vote would settle, once and for all, Britain’s position within Europe.

“Let’s be honest with ourselves: we’re reaching a crunch point. The EEC the British people voted to join has changed almost beyond recognition in the last 30 years. The politicians should wake up to that fact, and recognise why the public feels so left out of the debate.

“I am a passionate internationalist and pro-European. But I believe we must take the British people - indeed, all the peoples of Europe - with us on this journey. I don’t want a vote on a treaty which tinkers round the edges. It’s time for a new referendum, time to give a new generation the opportunity to debate what my generation debated back in 1975.

“Does Britain want to play a full part in the European Union as it is today; or do we want to sit on the sidelines? That’s the key to this whole debate.

“Labour prefers to ignore the issue, hopes it will simply go away. It won’t. The Tories are desperate to paper over the cracks in their party’s unity, clinging to a referendum like a drowning man clings to driftwood. They’re missing the point.

“Only the Lib Dems are prepared to say it like it is: it’s time for a national debate, time once again for the British people to make up their minds, and decide the ultimate question: do we want to be in the EU or not?”

Voyeurism populi

I know practically nothing about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, something I have in common with the rest of Britain, in spite of and also because of the sick-makingly voyeuristic media coverage this case has attracted.

Like the rest of Britain I plead guilty to having followed this case with a horrified, saddened and sometimes prurient fascination. I have moved between judging the parents, and anger at those who judge them without knowing the full facts. And I have watched with helpless indignation the obscene and unthinking xenophobia which engulfs Brits, exemplified by the press at all levels, when something Bad happens Abroad.

And then, just as I have despaired of any sense of common decency emerging from this tragedy, at last (some of) the public rebels against the hysterical slaverings of the media:

Listeners outraged by a BBC Radio Five Live debate on Madeleine McCann forced the station to change a phone-vote on her disappearance. Victoria Derbyshire's morning phone-in today asked listeners to vote on whether they still had sympathy for Madeleine's parents Gerry and Kate after they were officially made suspects in the case by Portuguese police on Friday.

Dozens of listeners contacted the programme to say they did not think it was a suitable subject for debate while the legal process was still ongoing. ... The weight of the negative reaction was such that producers were forced to change the vote to whether the station should be discussing the case at all - and listeners voted by 68% to 32% that it should not be.

It’s coming to something when the BBC - the BBC - has to ask its own listeners if it should exercise any editorial restraint when speculating live on air about an ongoing criminal investigation about which its journalists and listeners will know next to nothing beyond recycled tittle-tattle and their own prejudices.

Oxford's Labour group: out of their depth

I suppose I could admire the Labour group in Oxford for its sheer effrontery. But sometimes political hypocrisy can be a little too blatant to be effective.

But a double helping of hypocrisy was on the table at this week’s meeting of Oxford city’s Full Council, when Labour proposed keeping open the Peers Sports Centre and swimming pool in Littlemore. Fair enough, you might say. But there are two problems with the Labour party’s position.

The first problem is that the Labour group, each and every single member of it, voted to pull the plug on the pool back in February during the City Council’s budget-setting. And so, for that matter, did the Lib Dems, and every other party on the Council.

The reason? It’s pretty expensive, and needs an estimated £200k refurbishment - more importantly, it doesn’t fit with the Council’s ambition of having two excellent pools serving East Oxford, one of competition standard at Temple Cowley, and a family-friendly one at Blackbird Leys. Pulling out of running the pool (which is owned by the County Council) will save the City Council £100k in the current financial year - a saving Labour happily banked without so much as a murmur of protest just six months ago when presenting their budget.

But there’s a second problem. The pool and sports centre are located at Peers Technology College - set to be the site for Oxford’s first academy. When the school becomes an academy - and it’s a when, not an if - its current buildings will be replaced thanks to the government bribes funding tied to such status. Oxfordshire County Council, as the local education authority, and the Diocese of Oxford have both already made clear they won’t rebuild the pool or sports centre as part of the new academy site.

Now last month, the City Council debated a motion on Peers academy plans. Guess what happened? Yes, that’s right: every single Labour councillor present voted in favour of them, even though they knew it would mean the inevitable closure of Peers pool and sport centre.

So, on two separate occasions - in February and in August - Labour had the chance to try and save the leisure facilities at Peers. On both occasions, they chose instead to vote for policies they knew would lead to their closure.

Of course, none of this has stopped Labour and their two Littlemore ward councillors from mounting a campaign to save the pool. A campaign they know full well is utterly doomed from the start, not least thanks to their party’s policies, which they fully support!

And then we wonder why the public is cynical about politics…

Mark Oaten has a point

Of course, there’s lots to disagree with in today’s article by Mark Oaten in The Times arguing in favour of a Lib Dem / Tory coalition - for example:

Many people may be surprised by how much shared agenda there is between the two parties. On the environment, civil liberties and localism the two parties share some common ground.

“Surprised” doesn’t come anywhere near it, Mark. The Tory commitment to such values is about as firm as a meringue.

However, he does have at least half a point about the need for the party to shift its position what the Lib Dems would do in the event of a Hung Parliament. Simply to keep repeating our maxim, “Maximum votes, maximum seats”, will be seen as dodging the question - altogether too lawyerly - in the fevered maelstrom of a general election campaign.

Instead Mark urges:

Ming needs to come out now and state that, in the event of a hung Parliament, the Liberal Democrats will work with whichever party has the most MPs.

Well, I’m not sure whether it should be with whichever party has the most MPs… we are, after all, supposed to be a party committed to a fairer electoral system. But exchange the words “MPs” for “votes”, and I’m with him all the way.

Such an answer avoids the party getting dragged into the dead-end debate the media loves about whether the party is closer to the Tories or closer to Labour. (In reality, of course, they’re much closer to each other than we are to either one of them.) And yet it is a principled stance which promises the Liberal Democrats will respect the wishes of the public.

A double whammy, in fact.

More combing and why's OR The post what I wrote

Earlier this week, I compiled the Top Lib Dem Media Tarts of the Year over at Lib Dem Voice. It doesn’t take that long to comb the Lexis-Nexis database on which it’s based, but, still, I need something to occupy my mind while I tally numbers.

Fortunately, the BBC recently released this Morecambe and Wise dvd, keeping me happily occupied. Which is all the excuse I need to post this clip: