Interview with Nick Clegg - Part Two

My prize for winning Lib Dem Blog of the Year on Saturday was a 25 minute interview with Lib Dem party leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. I posted the first part yesterday where we discussed the coalition's legacy, pension funding for mortgages and a particular hobby-horse of mine, drugs policy. Here is the second and final part of the interview including a discussion on how his speech last year that stated "Birth should never be destiny" can be reconciled with his support for an hereditary monarchy, the three things he likes about Ed Miliband and whether anything can be done to improve PMQs. My questions are in bold. The rest are Nick's words:


Slightly changing tack now. In Spring 2011 in a speech about social mobility you used the phrase “Birth should never be destiny” which I completely agree with. But how can you reconcile this with your support for an hereditary monarchy?

I just don’t believe for a minute that if you were to man the barricades and effect a revolution to turn the United Kingdom from a monarchy into a republic, suddenly the problems of poor housing, poor infant health, poor pre-school support, poor education for poor children in primary schools would suddenly be solved. I think it’s the wrong answer to a much more profound social problem which is bound up with our education system, housing and patterns of work. I just happen to think that the monarchy provides a sense of identity and clearly brings a great sense of sort of value and pride to the country. I think it unites people, and we want to unite people rather than divide them. I don’t think the monarchy in and of itself is why we have these huge social and economic forces and factors that prejudice the lives of children who are born into poor backgrounds.

I think what is be slightly different which may be what you’re after is: “Does it foster a culture of diffidence and hierarchy?”. I personally think Britain is not a particularly diffident or hierarchical society, I mean people just don’t take authority no questions asked any more.

I was going to phrase it slightly differently than diffidence. I was going to ask isn’t it true that because our head of state is there by virtue of birth rather than merit that it undermines the case at a fundamental level within our society for meritocracy which is something that as liberals we should be striving more for?

I’m going to give you an answer which is really based on real world pragmatism rather than theory. I’m sure you could write a sort of theoretical case for all sorts of radical reforms within our society and heaven knows I’ve tried to get rid of some of the obvious bastions of privilege and patronage in the House of Lords which was difficult. In fact it proved to be impossible because of the vested interests in the establishment parties…

…and I am aware that there is a big majority in the country currently in favour of the monarchy so I realise that this is a rather academic discussion.

Yes, and I personally, not least now that I actually have more contact with members of the Royal family have actually become a stronger supporter of the monarchy than I even was before.

So were you already a strong supporter of the monarchy?

Well, if you ask me “What are the things that would make society more liberal?” “What are the things that will ensure that a bright but poor child is not condemned by the circumstances of their birth?” I just wouldn’t put fiddling around with the monarchy anywhere on my shopping list of things to do. I’d put education, I’d put taxation, I’d put housing, health, jobs…

…I understand the point you’re making but don’t you think like for example in the US where any child could potentially become the President and the Head of State that that says something fundamental about that society and how it operates?

Well let’s first crack our immediate problem which is that children at the moment irrespective of their circumstances of birth don’t think that they could become Prime Minister! Or even leader of the Liberal Democrats. I think the displace the failings of the political class or decant them into an argument about the monarchy is slightly letting the politicians off the hook. We have a political class, people like me, dare I say it people like you: Blokes In Suits…

…I don’t normally wear a suit. I wore it especially for you Nick!

Well I’m flattered Mark! But a political class who are not representative of modern diverse Britain. That is a much more urgent problem we should be addressing it seems to me than reopening a debate that the British people don’t want us to reopen and that I genuinely don’t think has the direct effect on lack of meritocracy that you feel. I hear what you say but I don’t share that view.

OK. So my last two questions. They are both related. Politics is a rough old game and there is often bad blood between politicians and leaders of different parties. So to combat that can you list three things that you like about Ed Miliband?

He’s approachable, he’s interested in policy…

…and is he willing to engage in sensible debate because you don’t always get that from for example PMQs?

But PMQs is not a debate, it’s a shouting match!

He’s got a perfectly good sense of humour. He’s a civilised human being. I’ve talked to him on several occasions and I have found him easy to talk to.

He’s wrong though! But that’s a different matter.

Linked to this do you think that PMQs and politics in general might benefit from a change in approach? A friend of mine recently suggested that you could still have PMQs but once a week the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition sit in a room with a moderator and for half an hour or three quarters of an hour just debate policy. Without all the baying and the jeering and the “playing for your team”. Do you think politics might benefit from something like that?

Look, I’ve been through this myself. The problem that we have at the moment is that if you act in a thoughtful, considered, emollient, human manner in the bear-pit of politics whether that’s on the floor of the House of Commons or some moderated discussion what I’ve discovered is that people immediately brand that as weak and ineffective.

I mean I saw it myself in the first few months of this government. When I did Deputy PMQs or stood in for PMQs I tried a kind of… I mean sometimes I didn’t, sometimes I’d lose it and shout at the Labour benches but you know if I was to sort of engage then it would be written up the following day as “Oh, he’s weak, he’s rubbish” all the rest of it. If I got up and just yelled at the other side, said a few jokes, made them look ridiculous and beat them round the head and neck it would be “Oh, a good strong improved performance”. I’m afraid that there’s this remorseless logic at the moment for the way in the which politics is communicated, interpreted and mediated by the press which just constantly ramps up the antagonism. It doesn’t mean that politicians can’t speak to each other but I wouldn’t hold your breath that there’s a new public forum. Much that I would like the idea that politicians could have a sort of fireside chat. At the moment, funnily enough particularly at the moment I think there is a rather shrill, almost semi-hysterical tone which is entering into the coverage of politics in part of our press. I think it’s partly because the press themselves are quite anxious about how they are going to hold onto their own readers so they are becoming ever more hyperbolic in order to try and hold onto people.

Thank you very much Nick!

Thank you!

Interview with Nick Clegg - Part One

My prize for winning Lib Dem Blog of the Year on Saturday was a 25 minute interview with Lib Dem party leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. Here is the first part of the interview where we discussed the coalition's legacy, pension funding for mortgages and a particular hobby-horse of mine, drugs policy. My questions are in bold. The rest are Nick's words:


Thank you for agreeing to see me Nick

Not at all!

If we could start with a question kind of about the future but a little bit about the past too. With Lords reform now dead, what will be the coalition’s historic legacy do you think?

Oh I think the coalition’s historic legacy will be, firstly being a coalition! For those of us like you and I who are interested in politics being done differently and moving our sclerotic political culture forward, don’t forget that showing people multi-party politics works and that you don’t always just have to have either the blue team or the red team in charge is arguably more important than any one piece of legislation in terms of advancing the kind of politics that we believe in. Plural, evidence based, reasonable, where people set aside their differences in the national interest. I think that is massive and I don’t think that can be exaggerated. I think sometimes as Liberal Democrats we need to remind ourselves that however much people might be irritated by the antics of the Tory right and however much we might want to govern on our own actually proving that coalition works remains a massive strategic priority. And you know there are other things we are doing to change politics. The Fixed Term Parliament Bill which I think sometimes people assume that that’s just a small little ball; it’s not, it’s quite a big thing. We’ve been campaigning on that for generations and that actually changes politics quite significantly. I do think as a legacy we will have proved that politics can be done differently. That’s the first thing.

The second big thing is that we will be the government that has had to cope with the fallout of the biggest economic crisis this country has arguably faced for decades. I don’t think it is possible to exaggerate quite how serious this implosion was in the heart of our economy back in 2008. It’s not any old recession, I mean that was a complete breakdown, a sort of seizure in the heart, in the kind of transmission mechanism of our country, our capitalist system.

Vince Cable has described it as being like a heart attack.

Yes, it is very similar. The banking system is like a heart. It pumps money round the system. It’s like a heart pumping blood around a body and it had stopped. I sometimes think that people who say “Wellll, you should do this plan or that plan”…

The idea that you can recover from a heart attack of that severity with one policy or one wave of the magic wand. I think history will judge us very kindly in that if we hadn’t stepped up to the plate to provide a government that could pull us back from the precipice, which is where we were teetering back in 2010. If we can show by 2015, not that we’ve sorted everything out but that we have basically pointed the economy… by the way not simply putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, but actually rewiring the economy on a different basis, I think we will have done a great thing because we will have not only fixed the problem but we will have learnt the lessons from the past. By the way this agenda includes really, really building on green growth and not having this ludicrous stand-off between people who say you have to have growth and those who say you have to go green as if the two things are separate. They’re not. They go hand in hand.

And the third big thing for me is to make sure we don’t only repair the economy but that we also at the same time seek to unblock society to make it fairer in the very specific sense of giving people the opportunity to get ahead, live out their dreams and fulfil their talents. A liberal view of life is not one which wants to flatten and homogenise people but which wants to release potential in each and every individual. That’s why I place such emphasis on tax reforms so that people on low pay can keep more money. On our early years reforms so that two and three and four year olds get more support than they have ever done before. On the pupil premium, on making sure that we cherish vocational education just as much as university education. These are things which you would struggle to put some of it on a leaflet by 2015 but is what I think liberalism is all about. We live in a highly segregated society where privilege communicates itself across generations and where disadvantage does as well. Much more than in other liberally democratic developed nations.

So those are really the three things: changing politics for the good, fixing the economy but rewiring it for good and creating a really rich sense of fairness about how society works.

Just picking up that final point in the context of the announcement about the potential partial funding of mortgages from people’s parent’s and grandparent’s pensions which you made yesterday. Some people have been talking about it and I was just asked to discuss it on the radio. The question I’ve been asked and I am wondering myself is, isn’t this only going to help rich families basically? How is this progressive and how is it going to help poorer people?

Firstly you’re quite right that it doesn’t help everybody. It only helps those people who have got assets in pension pots which they can mobilise as a lump sum to offer as a guarantee to mortgage lenders so that your child or grandchild can take out a deposit. So it’s unashamedly for people with that asset. People who have got a £40,000 pension pot but have got very little disposable income, they don’t feel very rich. They may have very little in their current account and by no stretch of the imagination could they be called rich, yet they are people if you like in the middle or even low-to-middle income bracket who just so happen to have this pension pot which they wish to mobilise for the benefit of their children. So it’s not for everybody, you’re quite right. It is for people who have got a particular asset in the form of a pension pot. So it that sense it’s not for everybody. But it helps a set of people. The rough calculations from Steve Webb are that it could be made available to around 250,000 people in this country. Clearly not all of them will do it, but even if a small proportion do that’s still helping thousands and thousands of youngsters and helping them get a home that they otherwise wouldn’t get. It’s not a catch-all solution.

So you see it as part of a basket of measures to help?

Of course.

I know there are lots of other things being done as well but particularly when it comes to helping people get a house, or get a residence (it doesn’t always have to be a house). I used to rent for many years actually and one time I just had to get out of my house within two months because the landlord decided he wanted to let it to his son. I had no real security of tenure beyond a couple of months, I had to go. It was very frustrating and I just wonder what measures you think would be appropriate to help in that area.

I think what we need, above all frankly is more homes. More affordable homes, more social homes and more private homes for rent. There are a lot of people in the lower income bracket, not the lowest who rely increasingly on private rented accommodation and that’s why, much though all the press coverage of the announcements I and the Prime Minister made recently about the housing package were all about the temporary removal of the restrictions on extending your conservatory. Actually by far the biggest thing, something that’s never happened before which is that we broke the taboo in the treasury that says “Oooh, you can’t use the government’s balance sheet to offer as a sort of insurance policy” we offered £10 billion worth of guarantees to the registered social landlords and the house-builders who build housing for private rent. And they are telling us that this is going to be a massive shot in the arm for the provision of housing that you say people rely upon. Particularly those people who can’t get onto the property ladder as owners outright, or are often in transition in their professional or family life.

I wanted to ask you about perhaps a slightly controversial issue, drugs policy. Barack Obama recently said that drugs policy “is a legitimate topic for debate”. I think sometimes in the US it’s closed down as an issue but he’s clearly receptive to it. David Cameron himself called for a debate on legalisation of drugs 10 years ago when he was part of a select committee and signed up to the report that said that. There are also serious moves taking place in Latin America along these lines, I’m sure you’re aware of them. The world is moving on so is it possible that the coalition could do something on this issue? Could perhaps make some changes in a direction that would help reduce harms caused by drugs?

Firstly, I’m at the Liberal Democrat end of this debate in that I start from an assumption that the so-called War on Drugs is a spectacular failure and that we’ve got to be driven by evidence, not prejudice nor dogma…

Do you think that this government is receptive to that though?

Well I was going to come to that. I actually think that if you look at what we’re doing as a government in the drugs strategy, published in the first few months of the government’s life… Would it be the drugs strategy that a Liberal Democrat would write? Probably not but there is a lot in there, particularly on remedial support for people who have long term drug addictions which is very, very promising indeed. If you listen to the stuff that Ken Clarke was promoting as Justice Secretary and even Chris Grayling with his reputation for a being a “hard man of the right” actually I think there is now a cross-party consensus that we cannot simply carry on warehousing people in our prisons who have very serious mental health or drug conditions and not deal with those conditions themselves. So I think that’s a change. However, do I think there might be a case to look at this again? Well of course you’ve got to look at this, over and over again. We don’t have the answer to something which is a scourge in society.

But even measures like for example changing the categorisation of cannabis which was moved from B to C and then back to B. Cannabis is widely perceived as being a lot less harmful than something like alcohol.

Mmm.

The fact that this government, and not just this government, every government for many decades seems to largely ignore the evidence on this issue. Do you think there is any possibility of the government moving in a more progressive direction on something like cannabis? Just to put it into context as well there was a recent study that demonstrated fairly unequivocally that children under the age of 18 can seriously damage the development of their brains. But after the age of 18, there isn’t really that risk there. I’m not saying there is not risk with cannabis after 18 but that particular one is not there. So I thought it might be more appropriate to legalise cannabis but make it so that children cannot get hold of it in the same way as currently with alcohol, rigorously enforce that and therefore send a message that is evidence based regarding that particular drug. The drugs laws at the moment are not taken very seriously by some, perhaps because they’re not based very much in evidence, you know “All drugs are as bad as each other”. People know that is not true.

Basically I agree with your assumption that politicians should, in as much as it is possible for politicians to do this, refrain from seeking to make unilateral decisions, which of course need to be informed by what the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs say, and what the police say and others. That’s certainly a principle that, I’m not going to pretend is always met in practise but is certainly one that I am personally very committed to.

The second thing I would say is that you are quite right, there are an increasing number of bodies who are revisiting this debate in the round. So for instance the Home Affairs Select Committee has been looking at this now for a long time and I think is due to report in December. I will be reading that very, very closely indeed. If a cross-party select committee revisits some of these issues and urges us to open them up as a government, I think the onus is on us, not them to explain why we shouldn’t. Because every time people look at this issue on a cross-party basis in a considered fashion, it seems to me over several years now including in the committee that David Cameron once sat, actually the advice is for radical action towards a more evidence based approach. I will look out for what the HASC has with quite an open mind.

You may not be able to answer this question because I am sure you can’t read David Cameron’s mind but do you think that he would be receptive to such a debate? He certainly seemed to be 10 years ago and I wonder what’s changed.

I’ve no idea. I haven’t talked to him about it. I strongly suspect the Conservative Party as it has been for a long time is quite divided on this issue. You do have a liberal wing in the Conservative Party that is actually quite thoughtful and liberal and not hidebound by prejudice or fear of the Daily Mail headlines which is prepared to be free-thinking about this, driven by the evidence. Then you have another wing of the Conservative Party which you know, just wants to grab the headlines and appear tough even if it doesn’t actually help youngsters who are addicted and it doesn’t actually help reduce crime. Like so many things in the Conservative Party, there is this constant battle for its soul. We are lucky enough that we operate in the Liberal Democrats on this issue from a pretty calm, considered, reasonable and evidence based approach.


Tomorrow I will post the remainder of my interview with Nick including a discussion on how his speech last year that stated "Birth should never be destiny" can be reconciled with his support for an hereditary Monarchy, the three things he likes about Ed Miliband and whether anything can be done to improve Prime Minister's Questions!


You can now read the second part of the interview here.

Interview with Total Politics

I was interviewed by Total Politics last week about blogging, what I think of the new coalition government and which bloggers I like (and dislike).

You can read what I said here.

Cameron bottles out of Paxman interview

Paul Waugh is reporting that David Cameron has backed out of an interview with Jeremy Paxman for Panorama next Monday. Nick Clegg already faced him two days ago (and held his own as I blogged about here). Gordon Brown is still to confirm if he will take part.

I'm not sure what Cameron is playing at here. In elections since 1964 the party leaders have all faced a Panorama "big interview". The fact that the Tory leader has backed out breaks with this tradition.

I expect the Tories will claim that because of the leader debates there is no need for the big interview. I don't buy that. The style and specific focus on the leader and their policies by such a leading interviewer is quite different from the way the leader debates are structured.

I also think the fact that Nick Clegg went ahead with his throws Cameron's decision into sharp relief and will not be received well by people.

I think Cameron should find time in his schedule to face Paxman. If he doesn't then people will justifiably ask what he is afraid of.

Interview with Anna Arrowsmith, Lib Dem PPC for Gravesham

Anna Arrowsmith was recently selected as the Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Gravesham in Kent. She was already fairly well known as a leading director and producer of pornographic films for women (under the pseudonym "Anna Span") and hence her selection has caused a fair bit of comment in the media with even a question being asked about her on BBC's Question Time programme last week.

I interviewed Anna over Skype a couple of days ago. I was interested in finding out more about her background, her campaign, why she chose the Lib Dems and what the extent of her political ambitions are.

Warning, there are some descriptions of sexual activity pertaining to one of Anna's previous campaigns part way through the interview.

You can listen to the audio of the interview in the player below or download the mp3 file from here.

Lib Dem TV launches with an interview with Martin Tod

I have started a new site called Lib Dem TV.

On it I intend to put up any interviews or other sorts of footage involving Lib Dem members and candidates that I can generate. I am also happy to post any relevant footage from other Lib Dem activists that might be of interest more widely. If you want to submit anything please e-mail me here.

The first post went live early this morning and is an interview I did with Martin Tod, Lib Dem PPC for Winchester over a Skype video call yesterday. We discussed spring conference, his campaign in Winchester, his use of the internet and other technology to help with this and that favourite topic of mine, electoral reform.

You can watch it here.

I've been interviewed by Matt Wardman

Back in September, I was interviewed by Matt Wardman of the Wardman Wire blog over the phone. It has taken a little while but Matt put the interview online in audio form on Friday. You can access it here.

We discussed various subjects but the main focus was on getting wider coverage (including mainstream media) for blogs and what can happen to nuance when blogposts get mainstream coverage.

I've been interviewed by Tory Rascal

Tory Rascal got in touch with me recently and asked if he could interview me for his "Blogger profile" series on his blog. I was happy to oblige.

I think he asked some interesting questions about blogging and politics. You can read the results here and judge whether my answers are as interesting!

Interview with Bridget Fox, Lib Dem candidate in Islington

Last weekend, I took a trip over to Islington to meet Bridget Fox, the Lib Dem candidate for Islington South & Finsbury.

I had got to know Bridget a little bit via Twitter and blogging but I thought it would be interesting to meet her. She seemed like a strong campaigner from what I could tell and with the Labour incumbent Emily Thornberry only having won against Bridget by 484 votes in 2005, the seat is one of the party's main targets at the next general election.

I helped out during the day with some leafletting and canvassing. In between the morning and afternoon sessions I took the opportunity to interview her outside the Market Cafe on Whitecross Street. Below is the transcript of the interview.

Before you read on I should warn you that this is the unedited version of the interview. I have included it here for completeness and for those who want to know more about this very impressive candidate who could well be a Lib Dem MP in less than a years' time so it is pretty much a straight version of the full half-hour discussion we had. For those who don't want to read the full interview there is an edited version which has been posted on Lib Dem Voice here (although the juiciest stuff about her views on the sexiness of libraries is only in the version below!).

My questions are in bold and Bridget's answers are in italics. Interview begins:

What first sparked your interest in politics?

Well, I grew up in a political household. My dad was a local councillor when I was a small girl and a local campaigner in the Labour Party. Both he and my mum were very active in all sorts of community groups and single issue campaigns like anti-apartheid and the world development movement so I grew up kind of thinking it was a normal thing to do.

So was it the Labour Party that you initially got involved with then?

I helped my dad out with his campaigns when I was still too young to vote. Then when I went to university, I always assumed that I would join the Labour Party but I ended up joining the Liberals because I found they were closer to my own views. Still committed to social justice but much more interested also in the individual and in the environment, two things that I was increasingly concerned about.

Was it a wrench for you to join a political party that was not the one that you were brought up with?

I was very worried that I would be hurting my dad’s feelings. It was quite funny because it was just after the formation of the SDP and my parents had discussed that a lot and my dad had decided to stick with the Labour Party although he agreed with a lot of the criticisms of it that were made by the SDP. So then a couple of years later when I went and joined the Liberals I was worried he would be very hurt but he has always respected my decision. Then 50 years after he joined the Labour Party he ended up leaving them over the Iraq war anyway and ended up helping me out in my election campaign. Returning the favours!

Did you consider joining the SDP?

I might have done but I was doing French at university at the time that it was all happening and hence I was abroad at the time of the 1983 general election. So I came back and the first campaigns that I got involved with really were later than that so I kind of missed that moment. But I think because I was in a Labour family that had decided not to join the SDP, it would have been harder for me to join them than the Liberals.

Because of the damage that they were doing to Labour?

Yes, although Shirley Williams always was and remains my political heroine. Also, with hindsight what the SDP founders did was both necessary and very brave.

You’ve been involved with Islington and lived here for a long time, nearly 20 years. What do you like about the area?

I think it’s amazing. It’s virtually in Central London yet it has a really village-y feel. It’s got very rich resources in terms of cultural opportunities and leisure opportunities. It’s also very diverse, both ethnically and socially. So it’s an area where anyone can live. It’s also where my dad’s parents were from originally so I’ve got roots here as well.

I noticed that you are a council leaseholder. Do you think this perhaps gives you an insight into how people in the constituency live that some PPCs and MPs who perhaps do not live in that sort of situation wouldn’t have?

I think it’s important in Islington, the vast majority of people here live in flats and a majority live in council estates even if they are not council tenants. If you roll back a decade, it was two thirds of the constituency were council tenants and “right to buy” has gradually eroded that. I think it is important for people to know that life on estates is like. To know what dealing with the council as a landlord or a freeholder is like and also just to have that day-to-day experience. It’s much easier if you know what it’s like to deal with issues than if you’re just experiencing it as a visitor I think.

And have you had any problems that may have given you further insight?

Yes, I think I have seen the good and bad side of living on an Islington estate. I haven’t always lived there though, I have lived in a variety of different sorts of accommodation in my time in Islington and I think that is good experience. But yes, my estate has had its share of anti-social behaviour. At the moment we are having improvement works done by the council and I have seen the good and bad side of how that is handled from a leaseholder point of view. I think that if you do have people coming to you with casework then it is much easier to handle it if you have been there yourself?

How do you think your background as a librarian might have influenced your politics and helped inform it?

(Laughs) Well, librarian sounds like a very old-fashioned unsexy job title these days but when I trained, we were at the forefront of the freedom of information movement and we were all about giving them the information to empower them in their lives. That’s absolutely central to my philosophy as a liberal and also what I think people in politics should be about. So to me it’s absolutely seamless with my outlook on life and how I try and live it. Public libraries are like street-corner universities and they are still how many people find out about what’s going on in terms of their access to public services and their access to information as well as a nice place to borrow a novel for your holidays. So I think there are very positive links there. Also, starting my life working in public libraries, it does mean that you meet all different kinds of people and trying to meet their needs which does is very good training for being a community politician.

You say libraries are unsexy but if you believe the comedian Rob Newman, they are a hotbed of sexual tension because of the enforced silence and people, you know all sitting there in close proximity...

(Laughs) Well there are interesting people in all walks of life but I wouldn’t say I’d ever found libraries terribly sexy! However I do think freedom of information is a very sexy concept!

I noticed one of the issues that you feel very strongly about is tuition fees for students. What do you think about the latest noises from the Lib Dem party leadership about this?

Well there have been various sets of noises. Firstly I think for me it is an absolutely touchstone issue because it is about whether you think education is something worth society paying for as opposed to the individual paying for and I think it is. It is also about whether you want the life changing experience of higher education to be availble to all on the basis of merit, not ability to to pay and I do. So for me it’s a no-brainer. Having said that, I was alarmed when it looked like the party might be changing its opposition to tuition fees and I am glad it’s been seen off...

But has it been seen off though?

Well, I think it was seen off in the policy thing and we had Stephen Williams came to one of our pizza and politics evenings to debate the issue with us and I was confident it had been seen off at that stage. I think now the position we’re in is that we are looking at a situation where the next parliament which I hope and expect to be a member of is going to have to make tough decisions because there isn’t going to be enough money to go around. In a context where at the moment people do pay tuition fees, I think it is understandable for the party to say of the things we may want to change, spending a lot more money on this now may not be something that we are able to do immediately even if it is something that we want to do. To me, it’s not a cut, it’s can’t spend more money yet which in a time of recession I think is understandable but it is still something I believe is right in principle and I hope we would do when the money is there.

That answer implies that you think there are more important things that money could be spent on.

I don’t know what the state of the books will be and I think maintaining the core public services we’ve already got and tackling climate change and dealing with globalisation are as important for the future of the country as higher education. I wouldn’t want to cut primary schools to pay for higher education for example because clearly more people benefit from primary schools but I hope, well we do have plans to invest in both and that is what I would like to do. Certainly I am going to be an MP on the progressive left of the spectrum, I will always be defending and advocating public services.

My biggest objection to tuition fees is, as you indicated at the start of your answer, is that their existence favours young people from better off backgrounds, it’s bad for social mobility and it means that people for whom £20,000 or £25,000 is a lot of money end up with those sort of debts before they even enter the job market.

Absolutely.

Given that, would you be receptive to the idea of something like a graduate tax whereby although they wouldn’t have the debt hanging over their head. There would be maybe a 1% or 2% premium on the tax that graduates pay which would overall have the same effect in terms of pay-back but it would be over a very long period of time and if they never achieved a particularly high income then they wouldn’t pay very much back on that at all.

I think that last bit would be crucial. I wouldn’t want a system that discouraged graduates from going into socially useful work, or discouraged them from writing novels, painting paintings, writing poetry and living in a garret while they did it. I certainly wouldn’t want a system where the social payback effectively from funding people’s higher education is that they went to work in the city. That doesn’t seem to me to be what we are trying to achieve.

But if it was a small-ish percentage premium...

I wouldn’t have a problem with that. The other argument of course is that if you get a better job you pay more income tax anyway but I certainly wouldn’t have a problem with a graduate tax as part of a fairer taxation system.

Do you still work full time?

I do at the moment, I work 4 days a week. I have chosen to and I am lucky that I have an employer who has been supportive of me doing that.

And how long have you been doing that for?

In my current role for about 2 years now.

Is the reason for that so you have more time for your campaigning as the parliamentary candidate?

It is yes. I mean we don’t know when the general election campaign is going to be. I was reselected as the candidate for this highly winnable seat in January 2007 and I said then that I would work in a way that enabled me to support campaigning so I work 4 days per week and I work largely from home which is in the constituency. That means I am available both to experience maximum time in the constituency which I think is important and also to do campaigning. Frankly, sometimes I use that extra day in the week to do things that normal people do at the weekend, I might be just doing my laundry or whatever. I won’t necessarily be campaigning all the time but it gives me that flexibility that I can attend community events and go campaigning which is what I want to do.

Do you think that if you weren’t able to do that and you did have to work a 5 day week or even as quite a lot of people have to do these days work even more than a 5 day week, with some evenings and weekends do you think that would hamper your ability to campaign?

It would certainly hamper the style of campaigning I like to do. I spend a lot of my time door-knocking. Even now in “peace time” I door-knock three nights a week and every weekend, not always all weekend but certainly either Saturday or Sunday and sometimes both and I think that is important. This is a constituency with a high turnover of residents so we can’t rely on the fact that the people we have met before will necessarily be the electorate this time round and even though a lot of people are online we also have quite a digital divide with a lot of older and poorer people who are not online. I think people are cynical about not meeting politicians and them being remote and detached. That’s not me and that’s not how I want to be. I love campaigning and I have chosen to take a back seat in my previous career to enable me to spend more time on the campaign trail.

What’s the hardest thing about being a parliamentary candidate?

There are huge benefits and the more winnable the seat, the harder you work to become the candidate so no-one should ever complain about being one! There are hard things. There are never enough hours in the day. The other thing is that if you are the candidate, it’s different from being a council candidate even when you’re part of a team; it can all feel very personal as if it’s all about you. So if something goes wrong, operationally or there’s a row about something or some negative feedback on something you’ve done it’s very hard not to take it personally and think “Ohhh, we’re all doomed!”. Of course the great thing about Islington is that it’s not two steps forward and one step back it’s like five or six steps forward and one back but even so the one back can feel very personal if you’re the candidate. So managing that and the constant self-motivation is very important. I don’t find it a problem, I love what I do and I feel privileged to do it but it is potentially extremely demanding. And it takes over your life, it’s the first thing you think about in the morning and it’s the last thing you think of when you go to sleep at night. If you can sleep!

Yes, but I suppose that the prize at the end of it is very, very great isn’t it?

And with a 0.8% swing to win, it’s very doable here.

Indeed. All the Lib Dem parliamentary candidates that I have met who are in winnable seats, and I have met a fair few now, seem very, very driven. There’s something that unites them and I guess even if I hadn’t have known that you were a candidate, I think after having spent 5 or 10 minutes with you I would have sussed that you were at least “the type”! Have you noticed that yourself and did you always feel that eventually you would want to stand for parliament?

When I was about 15 or 16, I really wanted to be an MP. Then I thought I would be a Labour MP. Then I kind of went off the idea party because I thought it wasn’t a realistic aspiration possibly for a Lib Dem – anyone in the party at the time of merger would have thought being an MP would be a rather remote career goal!

Yes, what did we have about 12 MPs or something?

Yes, and I had grown up in a part of the world where we were third place politically and then it was about fifteen years ago I suppose I got into the idea. Originally I have to say I was partly spurred on by the fact the party went for mixed gender shortlists. The idea was to encourage more people to stand and it worked because local parties turned around to their best women activists and said “have you thought about going for candidate approval” in a way perhaps they hadn’t done before. So I was given some helpful shoves and they were pushing at an open door in terms of what was happening in the rest of my life it seemed to be a realistic aspiration. I do love it. You have to have a lot of energy to do it but I find it gives me energy. I think if you are doing something you like, you get energy from it and if you are finding an activity is taking energy out of you then it might not be the right thing for you to be doing.

Yes, I understand that. So have you noticed this “common bond” between candidates or aspiring candidates?

Yes. I think you have to be motivated. I think some people come across in their manner as more driven than others and I think we all have times when we’re not. But when I am on the campaign trail yes I am very upbeat and driven. I’m sure there are times when I’m at home with my feet up when I hope I’m hopefully not so driven! I mean I talk to my fellow candidates quite a lot – we have a very strong network of key seat Lib Dem candidates which is an invaluable network...

Does that include incumbent MPs as well?

Yes it does, but there is sort of a cohort that we all hopefully expect to get elected together and we work very closely together even though some of us are quite geographically disparate. My buddy for example is a candidate in Scotland but in this age of the internet and telecoms we talk to each other all the time and compare notes.

Who is that by the way?

Katy Gordon from Glasgow.

Oh yes, she’s just come onto Twitter hasn’t she?

Yes she has. She’s a great girl and we are both fighting urban seats and we compare notes a lot. We often find that we are doing it in the small hours certainly both she and high have a high metabolic rate and don’t need much sleep, or get much sleep! Maybe that is a common factor. Every candidate says they need more hours in the day and maybe we make more of them by not sleeping much!

You do know that Margaret Thatcher got by on only 4 hours sleep a night don’t you?

Yes I know but it doesn’t make her a role model!

OK! Let’s move on from that one! What would you say is your number one political passion?

Oh goodness! It’s very mean to ask somebody for one you know!?

You can say more than one then!

I’ll give you three then. Education, the environment; fighting climate change and civil liberties. I think that’s a pretty good Lib Dem mix!

So, the environment. That’s a subject very close to my own heart as well both politically and also professionally. I run a company and we help design buildings in a more energy efficient way and provide software for the same purpose. So what particularly in that area have you campaigned on and focussed on?

Well it’s a whole range of things. I’m a supporter of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and I’m concerned about climate change. I spent 8 years as a councillor in Islington and for 4 of those years I had the environment brief on the council and 2 of which I had the same brief in opposition. So it’s something where I have been privileged to put into place lots of environmentally friendly measures. For example all the street-lights in Islington are now powered from renewable sources – that was a decision that I took when we changed the contract on those. We’ve also got very strong green planning rules in the borough about requiring people to have green roofs where appropriate and so on. So I feel that this is practical stuff and also campaigning on things like clean air which are very important in an urban borough. Promoting sustainable transport, you name it. I think one of the things is that people can feel that climate change is such a big and scary issue, they either don’t want to think about it or they think there’s nothing that can be done. I believe that we’re the generation that has a chance to do something and because of that we absolutely must. But there are things we can all do.

But how do you deal with people who say that man made climate change doesn’t really exist and that it’s down to sun-spots or it’s cyclic?

Well they can continue to think that but in the meantime the rest of us have got to try and get on and save the planet.

But they would say to you that you’re going to have an impact on the economy that’s unnecessary because it’s unproven and the science isn’t there?

I understand there is a concern out there that with the end of the cold war, the anti-capitalist movement has just moved on and hijacked the green agenda and is using it to attack a consumerist capitalist society.

Do you think there is an element of that going on?

There may be an element of that. However that doesn’t mean that this whole business about climate change is wrong. I believe it to be right and if it is, it would be inexcusable to do nothing about it. I don’t have kids but I have nieces who I love more than life itself and this is the world in which they are going to be living their lives and I want it to be there for them. Also in terms of global social justice. We’re talking about the adverse effects of climate change as something in the future for us but it’s already happening in parts of the world and there are Bangledeshi constituents here whose relatives are already struggling to live because of changes in flood patterns due to climate change. It is happening and if we have a chance to do something about it... and I’m not a hair-shirted environmentalist, I’m a freedom loving person but I think the great thing about the market which is why I favour it above state planned provision, certainly for anything that isn’t a natural monopoly is that the market responds to the demands of the age and that is for green technology and sustainable solutions. There are whole new entrepreneurial opportunities there and creating opportunities for science and design and think that is exciting. It’s not about saying stop doing X, it’s about saying we’ve got a great opportunity to do Y and Z and save the planet so why wouldn’t you want to do that?

How did it feel to win a scholarship to Oxford?

(Laughs) Well it was more honour than money. I mean I think the scholarship was sixty quid a year which didn’t go very far even in those days. But it was a great honour. My parents went to university but neither of them went to Oxbridge and no-one from my school had ever gone to that college before.

It was Balliol college wasn’t it?

Yes, a political college and it was my first choice and I got it so I was very pleased.

But you didn’t do PPE!?

I didn’t do PPE no! Well I loved French, that was my passion at school and I wanted to carry on doing it but you couldn’t do just French at Oxford so I had to combine it with something. So I was very happy to combine it with History which actually now, on a day to day basis is probably more of a passion than the French so it worked out well. No, I didn’t do PPE...

Good! There are too many politicians around who have done PPE!

Although there isn’t much more to my life than politics at the moment, I do believe there is more to life than politics!

Oxbridge is renowned for turning out our future leaders. Do you think it’s helped you, or hindered you or had no effect at all?

I think what was good about Oxford, well first of all it was great academically obviously and it was a fantastic opportunity to get some great teaching. Looking back now, the number of fantastic lectures I missed because they were at 9:00am, you know makes you weep! I came from an all-girl school to a college that was 70% male! I was quite shy but going there was a confidence builder. Also, going there did fuel a very strong sense of obligation in me, I don’t want this to come out wrong but to use my skills for good. I wouldn’t say I am a good “Oxbridge networker” but I have still got friends today who I met there. I suppose that I did meet some of our future leaders as well, for example I was a contemporary of Boris Johnson...

You weren’t a member of the Bullingdon club were you!?

No! I don’t think girls were allowed in! I also got my first experience of practical politics at Balliol with student elections and my first party conference. There was also a great summer in 1985 that I spent driving around and helping out with the Brecon and Radnor by-election, which we won! It taught me that politics could be fun!

What is it that makes you a Liberal Democrat?

Well I joined the party because Labour’s method of social justice was not acceptable to me. I do not want to trade freedom for equality. Also, I could see the havoc that the Tories were wreaking. I have never doubted that it was the right choice. I think we have the right balance and I have seen how good we are at a local level, especially where poorer people have lost out because of Labour’s approach. The rich can buy themselves out of these problems but the poor can’t.

During the course of this interview, you have said more than once that you expect to be the next MP for Islington. How does it feel to be that close to achieving your goal and what would you want to achieve in your first twelve months?

Well I certainly would not to be so arrogant as to say I definitely will win. It’s of course up to the voters but there is only a margin of 484 votes and we need a 0.8% swing to get there. I would spend my first year being a good constituency MP – Islington deserves this.

Some question whether we have the balance right at the moment of the work that MPs do in their constituencies versus spending time at Westminster holding the government to account. Do you think the balance is right on this at the moment?

Well the job is both. Having spent time as a councillor I feel that is a good grounding to be able to represent the people here in parliament. I think it is easier for London MPs as they are closer and there is not as much time spent travelling back and forth. MPs are servants of their constituents though and the two jobs feed each other. Parliament should not be about abstract “what ifs” it should be about “what is”.

You are very active on Twitter and you also maintain a blog. How do you find using these sort of technology helps with your campaigning?

They are really useful but it would be lazy to just rely on the technology. There are still a significant minority of people who are not online but I think that as a politician to not use it would be wrong. It is a way of communicating that I do like, I really like the genuine interactivity but it is part of the mix.

What kind of support do you get from the party centrally?

We do get some funding from them but we also get funding locally. The best thing we get from the centre is the training and expertise as well as visits from MPs. For example Nick Clegg was here yesterday and soon the number of times he has visited us here since he became leader will be in double figures. That’s a huge vote of confidence for me and the team here.

My final question. Can you say something nice about your Labour opponent, Emily Thornberry?

I would say that she is a good mother.

Interview with Douglas Carswell MP about "The Plan"

I recently read "The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain" by the Conservatives Douglas Carswell MP and Daniel Hannan MEP. I found it an interesting read and whilst I did not agree with all the ideas proposed within it I certainly think it is a welcome addition to the debate on reform in the UK.

Douglas Carswell who runs a good and frequently updated blog here has been kind enough to grant me an interview about the content of the book which I have included below.

Particularly noteworthy for me is where he confirms that he would be willing in principle to campaign for electoral reform to Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies for Westminster. There aren't many Tories who would do that!

Interview below. My questions are in bold and the responses are in italics:

How many copies of the book have been sold so far?

Over 14,000 - and rising.

I was quite impressed to discover whilst reading it that the book is "Print on Demand". Do you think that eventually most books will be produced in this way?

Yes - and it won’t just be books that’ll be manufactured on demand.

As Dan and I were writing The Plan, I was reading Chris Anderson's The Long Tail. It gave us a eureka moment. Having written various books with various publishers previously, we realised that if we switched to print on demand, we could leverage off internet distribution ourselves directly.

We were convinced that the themes in our book would sooner or later become central to the political debate in Britain - we just didn't know when.

Then along came expensegate. The Plan suddenly seem prescient and demand took off. Print on demand meant that we were able to meet that demand 100%. The Plan wouldn't have been a bestseller had we published conventionally.

In Part One of the book you bemoan “declamatory legislation” based on emotive rather than proportionate evidence based responses to issues or events. What would you suggest is the best way to debate against this sort of political tactic?

The best way to ensure that the laws that are passed deal with real problems is to ensure that our law-makers are made more directly answerable to local voters. If we had a right of popular initiative, plus recall and open primaries to decide who gets to be the MP in the first place, we'd have wiser, more judicious people in our legislature, passing proportionate laws.

Part of your “Cleaning up Westminster” section suggests that select committee chairmen should be elected by the Commons in a secret ballot rather than appointed by the whips office. Wouldn’t the fact that the governing party generally has an inbuilt majority within the house restrict the effectiveness of this approach?

Not at all. That's what happens today. And its one of the reasons why the executive controls Parliament - rather than the other way round.

Using secret ballots to decide who gets to chair select committees would take power away from party whips. The executive would no longer be able to decide the shape of the legislature.

Even more profoundly, it'd change the chemistry of the Commons. Today advancement in Westminster comes through party whips. This encourages MPs to behave primarily as cheer leaders for the executive or shadow executive. It helps explain why the Commons generates much heat and noise, while at the same time being quite so supine and spineless.

Once you use free and fair ballots to decide who gets promoted, advancement would come from the degree to which an individual MP could command support and respect from across the chamber. It would encourage the fair and independent minded.

Another idea from the “Cleaning up Westminster” section is open primaries. You spend some time explaining how this would improve representation but you completely dismiss proportional representation saying: “it would make the problem even worse: a party list system concentrates yet more power in the hands of the whips”. This strikes me as a very selective and misleading representation of PR. Single Transferable Vote using multi-member constituencies, the PR system favoured by most electoral reformers requires no party list and many would argue actually puts even more power in the hands of the voter than open primaries as part of the actual election. What are your thought on this?

I'm increasingly open-minded about multi-member constituencies. Choice and competition are good in politics as well as business.

The key thing, however, is to recognise that with 7 out of 10 MPs coming from safe seats, we don't have enough choice and competition in our politics. I fear that some PR proposals would mean we ended up with a system where 9 out of 10 MPs stood zero chance of losing their seats.

But as I said, STV with multi-member constituencies avoids the list problems. I am very encouraged to see you being receptive to multi-member seats. Would you be willing to update a future edition of "The Plan" to include consideration of this?

Not sure there's going to be a Plan B! In October, I introduce a Bill in the Commons to allow open primaries in every constituency - and the right of recall. That's my number one priority for reform because it's a change we can bring in right now. And it'd change our rotten political system for the better right away.

So if there was to be a referendum for electoral reform to STV multi-member, would you support it and help to campaign for a "Yes" vote?

Yes - I think so. I'd want to see the detail first, but if done properly, I would campaign for change.

Part of the “A return to law, order and accountability” section focuses on the idea of locally elected Sheriffs (which I think would be a very good idea – I am certainly a fan of devolution). This reminded me of a book I read a few years ago by Jonathan Freedland called “Bring Home the Revolution” which coincidentally includes a 10 point plan for Britain too. Freedland includes radical ideas for devolving real power along the lines of the USA and popular sovereignty (as you do in “The Plan”) but he wants to go further than you wishing to change the UK to a Republic and creating a written constitution amongst other things. There are many potential changes like this that are not covered at all in your 10 points. Do you think “The Plan” is really radical enough?

I'm an admirer of Freedland. Like him, I also admire the United States greatly. But it is, as Freedland reminds us, an English system!

Public disgust with the political status quo in Britain is now so great, we stand a real chance of achieving some significant reforms. But the one way to guarantee that nothing changes, however, would be for the reformers to be overly ambitious. Rather than utopia, let’s actually achieve some bankable changes.

Instead of far reaching electoral reform, why not have open primaries right away to ensure our self serving politicians are held to account? Instead of a written constitution, why not do some pretty simply things that would ensure that those we elected held government to account properly?

The whole point of writing The Plan was to show what can realistically be done right away.

Some would argue that one of the reasons we are in such a mess now is partly because we do not have a written constitution and successive governments have been able to fiddle with no need for a blueprint or even a coherent idea of where they are heading with their changes. Isn't it therefore important that any changes that are made are at the very least properly codified as Freedland suggests?

I don't trust the kind of people who'd inevitably dominate the process. They'd be leftists and Guardianistas. So no.

We need to radically change our constitution in order to achieve the revolutionary aims that English radicals like the Levellers sought. It's not the American revolution we need to bring home - but the English revolution that we need to complete.

Starting from scratch with a written constitution wouldn't complete the English revolution. It'd put the vile elites - the quangocrats, human rights judges, Europhiles, remote technocrats and latter day Whigs - in control.

There are sections of the book where it seems to get dangerously close to describing what could be construed as right-wing revenge for perceived left-wing impositions. An example is in the section “Parliament should be supreme” where you claim that a “genteel coup d’etat” has been wrought on Britain by judges. You describe it as “Slow moving, genteel and from the Left.” There is also a list of right-wing dictators who have been subject to international indictment against left-wing dictators who have not. Do you recognise the potential problem here in trying to garner wide consensus (which you would surely need for the fundamental changes you propose) when the motivation for some aspects of your programme appear to read like this?

Actually the one thing The Plan never reads as is a narrowly Conservative work. Re-read the first few pages. It simply isn’t written as a Conservative book. It is very specifically not just aimed at a Tory audience.

It is aiming for something bigger than that. It is not saying this is what Conservatives need to do. It is saying this is what our country needs.

But it does recognise that the Left – as Gramsci recognised would happen - has captured key institutions. The Left’s long march through our institutions explains the leftist disposition of so much of the quango state – from the criminal justice system, to the BBC to the educationalists. The default settings of the quango state are well to the Left of the British people. That is why we need direct democracy – to recalibrate the state and undo the left’s creeping victory.

I think there is merit in a lot of your ideas in the “True localism” chapter. However some would argue that a land value tax would be a more fair and equitable way to raise local finance than a local sales tax. What are your thoughts on this?

How one localises control over tax revenues is less important than the fact one does it.

Fed up with old guard Tory centralisers, who said “it can’t be done”, “remember the poll tax” blah blah, I wrote an academic paper called Paying for Localism to show that it is possible to devolve control over finances. In my paper, I suggested turning VAT into a local sales tax. Doing so would ensure local councils became more or less self financing – and it’d not mean any new tax.

Have a look at it and let me know if you can come up with an even better model.

(Note: Link opens PDF document)

I found your ideas in the chapter “Putting patients in control” very interesting and I think they make a useful contribution to the debate which Mr Hannan has recently made ultra topical. However there are some (for example here) who say that the Singaporean model only works there because of its unique political situation where the government owns or very tightly manages most aspects of their economy and society. How do you respond to this?

I disagree. It’s not Singaporean exceptionalism that explains their better survival rates. Their system is better at ensuring that finite resources are allocated in a way that ensures everybody gets the medical care they need.

I particularly liked the part in the “Neighbourhood Welfare” chapter where you point out that benefit cheats would be much less likely to be as tolerated as they are by neighbours if the effect was felt in a local tax bill; I had not heard this expressed in this way before. Do you agree that if you want to try and sell your message more widely that you need to zero in on points like this that will resonate with people?

Yes. We need to keep showing that big, remote, central government actually harms the most vulnerable folk most of all. It’s made our country less compassionate and tolerant that it ought to be.

I think your “Direct Democracy” chapter where you call for the ability for referenda to be triggered by petitions of enough citizens is the best one in the book. However I feel that you do not go far enough. You spend time explaining how it will all work but you then pull back and say that parliament would retain an ultimate veto. If this was implemented, why should parliament be able to override the will of the people?

Because I still think you need a legislature. I want radical change to that legislature – so that you have citizen lawmakers, not professional politicians. I want the voters to have the ability to sack lazy, self-serving MPs by triggering by-elections. I want the people to help set the Commons agenda, and veto politicians and their endless folly. But I still think you need a legislature.

Once you’ve made the Commons properly accountable to the voter - and government properly answerable to the Commons – good luck to any MP who ignored what their local voters thought.

Ignoring voters is the default setting within our present rotten Commons.

I appreciate what you say and certainly agree with your final point about the Commons ignoring voters but you are still saying that ultimately parliament should be able to override the will of the people. There are places where a model similar to what you advocate is already used (such as Switzerland) where the legislature has no veto and it seems to work perfectly well; the government has to bow to the wishes of the people clearly expressed. Why should we be any different and instead have a compromised system?

The Swiss model allows referendums to veto what politicians want to do. As such the job of holding the executive to account has been democratised - its not just the legislatures role, but the citizens'. That is something I'd like to see in the UK, too. I'd also like people to be able to propose new laws - a right of initative.

But what I don't believe is that you can have a legislative process that starts with a right of popular initiative, followed by popular referendum - without the legislation passing through a legislature at some point.

Why do I think so? Well, look at my wiki-Bill experiment. I've used the wisdom of the internet to allow everyone to help me draft a Great Repeal Bill. It has been a tremendous success so far. A real Bill has been drafted by hundreds of citizens on-line - and the wisdom of the crowd has exceeded that of Westminster.

But even so, I think the wiki-Bill would need to be debated and scrutinised by a legislature in order to iron out one or two inconsistencies. Have a look here to see for yourself.

And my final question – if the Conservatives are in power after the next election, how much of your 30 point plan do you think will have been implemented after the first 12 months?

David Cameron has taken various ideas straight out of the book – open primaries or elected police chiefs, for example. His recent Milton Keynes speech about the need to decentralise power borrowed not only from the books ideas, but read as if it took from the actual text.

So far, so good. But never underestimate the power of the Sir Humphrey Appleby-types.

Hattip to Wikipedia for the image of Douglas used above.