Anders Hanson

If there is one thing that struck me more than anything at this week’s conference, it is that most people are now genuinely at ease with Ming Campbell’s leadership of the party.  It is however also true that people are discussing who comes next.

What I sensed in the last week is that people are starting to understand where Ming Campbell is coming from, and appreciate that even if it is not what they would have chosen.  This is tending to be along the following lines.  Firstly, with David Cameron’s personal popularity waning, people are recognising the advantage of having a leader with experience and gravitas who is genuinely respected by the public.  Secondly, despite the hiccups in the week before, he gave a good performance in everything that he did at conference and his leader’s speech was him in top form and giving the same excellent speeches that he gave in the leadership hustings.  Thirdly, people are also seeing that he is starting to whip the party in to better shape in terms of how it operates, pushing forward the party’s talent and the campaigns the party has
run over the last year have been more dynamic and proactive.   Not all of these things can be attributed to Ming alone, but they are a part of his way of operating as a leader.

But despite this, people are openly discussing the future.  Any why not?  There should be no contradiction in being content with the current next leader, but also looking for which person will come next.  Ming himself has said that he will lead the party at the next election, and in to the next parliament, but he has not said that he will go on and on and on.  The Independent debate at conference with Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne was inevitably seen by many as a debate being between the most likely candidates for the leadership next time.  Apart from the fact that this assumes they will the only two contenders, which I think is unlikely, this does a disservice to two brilliant politicians who both gave important contributions to the subject of how the Lib Dems move closer to power.  Indeed it should also be quite possible for someone to say that they might one day want to stand to be leader, without it being seen either as premature or underhand.  It is sad that any MP who breaks from the line of saying “there isn’t a vacancy and I fully support Ming” is then pilloried, despite being one of the MPs that is closest to and most supportive of the current leader.

This all sounds like me painting a very rosy picture of a very loyal party and denying that there is any dissent simply because of my links to both Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne.  But this is genuinely what I detect is happening, and that view was reinforced at this week’s conference.  Most in the party have no appetite for a leadership contest before the general election, for both the positive reason that they are supportive of Ming and the negative one that it will make the party look silly.  There are of course some people who are trying to undermine Ming’s leadership, but this a fairly small group which includes some MPs but is not, from what I can tell, directly linked to any of the leadership contenders.  But why this doesn’t worry me is because I have now been in the party long enough to remember the unrelenting criticism from some who wanted Paddy Ashdown to go from the moment he started informal links with Tony Blair, and the more immediate undermining of Charles Kennedy which started well before he was finally ousted.  I suspect those who have been party members for far longer than my eleven years will remember the same happening to earlier leaders too.

The people who are undermining Ming the most is the media, and that appears to be for one reason alone.  Despite many journalists having respect for Ming as a person, they have decided on the accepted line and none will deviate from it.  The only way the Liberal Democrats can counteract it, as journalists will find dissent even where there is none, is to keep up the campaigning in their own constituency.  Opinion polls will always show a worse situation for Lib Dems than there is in reality, as the national swing assumes the electoral contest is simply between Labour and the Tories.  In so many seats, that is simply not the case anymore, and the by-elections in Sedgefield and Ealing Southall should confirm that. We need to debate the future, but we need to temper this by not losing heart and keeping up the fight in our own areas.  That’s how we’ll win, and as a result hand on an excellent legacy to whoever is the next leader.

In yesterday’s Independent, former Lib Dem member Donnachadh McCarthy slates the Lib Dems in his article “The shameful truth behind the Lib Dems’ demise”.  He is wrong on so many counts, but I will pick out two.

Firstly, he says that instead of promoting its “good policy paper on how to reduce carbon emissions” the party is instead wanting “to waste enormous political energy over the next few years tackling a pointless referendum on Europe”.  Whatever the rights and wrongs of the party’s call for a referendum on Europe rather than on the new European treaty, he completely misunderstands what the party is doing, but then as someone who resigned in a huff then that is understandable.  The party has spent considerable time over the last year promoting its green tax switch, and constituencies all over the country have been campaigning on it.  I have already been given materials to help me campaign on the extension of our environmental policy that the party adopted yesterday.  The referendum on Europe is not our big campaign idea, it is simply our view on how Europe should be tackled.  Does Donnachadh really believe that when Ming is asked about Europe he should say, “sorry I don’t talk about that I will only talk about the environment?”

Secondly, Donnachadh uses the article to give more publicity to his favourite conspiracy theory about the “corrupting influence that politial lobbying has on the internal dynamics of the party”.  I accept that there are a lot of lobbyists who used to work for the party or still have positions within it.  But that is an inevitable result of the skill sets in both jobs being similar and so moving on from being party staff to be a lobbyist or PR person is a natural career path.  But what Donnachadh forgets is the party’s campaigning is usually driven by the party’s campaigns department, and is not in the hands of a clique around the leader.  The nature of Liberal Democrats is that if the leader told its staff to not campaign on a policy, they would tell him stuff it and they would go ahead and do it anyway.  One of the traits of Lib Dems is that they are non-deferential and a little bit rebellious.  He has a fair comment about some of the unhelpful advisors that Charles Kennedy had when he was leader, but has he not noticed that Charles is now no longer leader?  The staff in Ming’s office are now a completely different set of people, many of whom are far more grounded in the party and its campaigning than those who worked for Charles.  That is one of the things that Ming has improved since he became leader.  Donnachadh really needs to learn that When it comes to things going wrong in the running of the Liberal Democrats, the answer is usually cock-up rather than conspiracy.

Donnachadh does make some valid points about expanding the appeal of the party and broadening its base of supporters and funding.  When Donnachadh was a party activist, he served a useful role in pressing for those sorts of things, and was a useful voice of conscience on party executives.  But what always undermined his arguments was his obsession about conspiracies and apparent misdemeanours when there was no evidence and his concerns were small beer when compared to all the other things in the party that he would have been better spending his energy on.  Unfortunately for Donnachadh this meant that he fell from being a useful person for the party to have around to someone who was wasting his talents on ridiculous statements and unproven allegations.  The Independent should stop giving him the oxygen of publicity for his views on the Liberal Democrats, and instead leave him to concentrate on his excellent work in promoting greener living.

INDEPENDENT: The shameful truth behind the Lib Dems’ demise

Every time the Liberal Democrats refuse to join a coalition they are criticised. The typical responses are things like “I thought you Lib Dems believed in coalitions?” or “How can you support proportional representation (PR) when you don’t want to join a coalition” or “What was the point of me voting Lib Dem if you refuse to go in to government when another party asks you to”. Indeed if you read some of the comments to a posting on Brown’s proposal to Ming on Nick Robinson’s newslog, you would think that the only reason for the Lib Dems to exist is to prop up other parties. So let me explain why I do not believe that we have a duty to go in to a coalition or some other arrangement with another party.

As a Liberal Democrat I do of course believe in proportional representation. It is a core part of my beliefs and a key part of the party’s principles, and is referred to in the preamble to the party’s constitution:

“We believe that people should be involved in running their communities. We are determined to strengthen the democratic process and ensure that there is a just and representative system of government with effective Parliamentary institutions, freedom of information, decisions taken at the lowest practicable level and a fair voting system for all elections.”

But what it doesn’t say is “thou shalt join any coalition going”. I do believe in proportional representation, but I do not belive in coalition government out of principle. I simply accept that a natural consequence of electing a parliament where MPs are proportionate to their vote, is that coalition government will become inevitable as no party is likely to achieve 50% of the vote.

The Liberal Democrats exist, and stand for election, to achieve certain things. The party has a set of policies, that are guided by a liberal philosophy that has been engrained in the party for generations. It is these policies and principles that should guide you on whether to join a coalition or not. Basically, you need to decide whether the Liberal Democrat cause, and the things that your supporters voted for, are advanced sufficiently by the coalition that is on offer. If they aren’t, then you shouldn’t join it. The party’s cause could in fact be far better served better by turning it down and waiting until you can achieve more of what you want as the bigger party yourself or by working with someone else.

Some of the comments about Gordon Brown’s proposal to include Lib Dems in his cabinet talk about him “breaking the mould”, or being “progressive” or “forward thinking”. But I don’t see how putting people in your cabinet from a party that people didn’t elect in to government is any of those things. People always complain that politicians are dishonest. Surely it is dishonest to include in your cabinet people who do not believe in the party’s manifesto.

This may sound like me arguing against proportional representation. But I would argue that you work with the system you have got, and the current system gave Labour an overall majority and that is therefore what people voted for. If people had voted the same as last time but under a PR system then no party would have been put in to government and an arrangement would have had to be made between parties. Mind you, had we had PR last time people’s voting intentions could well have been very different anyway so it’s difficult to assume anything.

The Lib Dem refusal to work with Brown as a part of the cabinet should not however, mean that the Lib Dems should never co-operate on any formation of policy. Just as the constitutional convention in Scotland saw Labour, SNP, Lib Dems and those of no party at all working together to produce a plan for a Scottish Parliament, the same sort of thing could happen routinely within the Westminster arena on a host of policy areas. Indeed it would probably be a useful reform of parliament to make these things a formally recognised part of how parliament works. We do have select committees, but it might make sense for there to be a mechanism for two or more parties (or individual members of parties) to choose to come together to look at certain topics where there is already some unanimity between them and to then be formally recognised in a way that would allow them to access parliamentary resources, debating time and voting. I accept that it would be hard for these groups to change policy under First Past The Post, but they could carry real clout under PR and without the need to form proper coalition governments to achieve what they want. If these “conventions” did become a formal procedure in the House of Commons, they would also have the advantage of ensuring that any formed between Labour and the Lib Dems was not seen as a prelude to a coalition.

The Lib Dems are getting a hammering in some papers and online about its decision to not work with Labour. But the party is pretty united in being against it. Far from splitting the party as most papers seem to believe, it should unite it. The membership probably believe Ming’s decision is right, the MPs do, so where is the split? If it will split any party, it should be Labour who will be angry with Brown’s plan to include a member of a smaller party in their cabinet when he doesn’t have to.

NICK ROBINSON’S NEWSLOG: High Stakes

BBC POLITICS: Lib Dem anger over Brown ‘tricks’

First it was Cameron proposing a joint Lib Dem/Tory mayoral candidate in London.

Now it is Brown proposing that Lib Dems join his first Labour cabinet.

I can’t decide whether it is because they believe that the Lib Dems have such excellent potential mayors and ministers, or whether it is because they see as such a threat that they feel the need to stifle us by absorbing us in to some unholy alliance.

Either way, if the other parties feel the need to give us so much attention it doesn’t really give much credence to those anti-Liberal Democrat commentators who are so ready to believe that the Lib Dems are doomed under Ming Campbell’s leadership.

GUARDIAN: Revealed: Secret talks over Lib Dems in Brown cabinet

GUARDIAN: Campbell rules out Lib Dems serving in Brown cabinet

I was going to comment on Ming’s ludicrous call for a General Election now that Blair is going, but Jonny Wright has got there first with exactly what I wanted to say.

As has been pointed out: we elect local MPs, we elect them to represent a party not a leader (if they did represent a leader, maybe all Lib Dems should have caused by-elections when Charles went), we knew that Brown would probably take over some time in this parliament, and we didn’t say this when Major took over in 1990.

When I was told about this this lunchtime, I couldn’t quite believe it was something Ming had said. I assumed it must have been one of Norman Baker’s hobby horses. Obviously not!

JONNY WRIGHT: Ming Campbell - constitutionally incoherent