Jo Swinson could be our next leader

Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

I have followed Jo Swinson's career with interest. Until recently she was PPS to Nick Clegg and she was recently promoted to minister for employment and equality.

She is always keen to talk with activists and others on Twitter. She is relentlessly polite and engaging on issues and having observed her speaking at a number of fringe events over the years is an excellent public speaker in that sort of forum.

But where I have noticed her potential most of all is how she handles the much bigger stage in the main conference hall. She always appears to effortlessly have full mastery of her brief, whatever it may be and has a very persuasive manner. A good example was today during the "Generating jobs and growth in a time of austerity" debate which she summated. She very deftly handled the task of pulling together the strands of what everyone else had said as well as gently but firmly explaining why she thought an amendment that had been moved to try and change the nature of the motion was not in her view the right way to go. In fact there was a flash of steel at one point where she essentially described it as crazy albeit by utilising the device of quoting what Tim Farron had actually said about something else entirely. But there was no mistaking what she meant.

I was actually reminded a little bit of a young Tony Blair. Jo certainly has a lot of political charisma and it could take her a long, long way.

I was going to say in this post that she might be in contention to be "the next party leader but one". But on further reflection, I see no reason why she should not go for it the next time there is a vacancy. Cable and Farron will be the obvious runners but an insurgent campaign from the MP for East Dunbartonshire could yield great dividends. There will be lots of opportunity for her to demonstrate her political and debating skills during a leadership contest and I suspect that many party members will, like myself find their respect for her as a candidate increase the more they see of her.

I don't expect there to be a vacancy for a while (as I have repeatedly said to various radio stations in the last few days here at conference!) but when there eventually is, I would urge Jo to go for it.

BBC responds about dropping Jo Swinson from BBC Question Time #bbcqt

A couple of weeks ago, Jo Swinson was dropped from BBC Question Time at 48 hours notice. A number of Lib Dem bloggers were very unhappy about this, indeed Caron Lindsay even started a group on the Lib Dem ACT system to protest about it.

Some people (including myself) contacted the BBC to complain about this decision. It seemed a particularly bad decision given that was the week that Iraq war inquiry started (Lib Dems were the only major party to oppose the war) and it was the second time in four weeks that there had been no Lib Dem on the panel. There were some suggestions that Jo was dropped to make room for the SNP as the show was broadcast from Scotland but the Lib Dems have 12 times as many MPs in Scotland as the Tories and they still had a representative on the panel. Also, there were two non-politicians on the panel. Why could one of them not have been bumped.

Anyway I have not received a response to my complaint yet but Daisy Benson, a Lib Dem councillor from Reading (who blogs here) was one of the other people to complain and she mentioned on Twitter that she has received a response today. Here it is:

Thank you for your e-mail regarding 'Question Time':

We forwarded concerns on this issue to 'Question Time' Executive Editor Gavin Allen who explained that we constantly monitor the balance of the panel and that in light of their national electoral strength, the level of representation for the Liberal Democrats on the programme remains very strong. He added that on this occasion the panel was rearranged to reflect a change in the prominence of some of the issues due to be discussed on the programme and in order to facilitate debate by having representatives willing to question the central political consensus on these issues, of which the Liberal Democrats are a part. He also added that: "It was regrettable - but necessary - that the decision to replace Jo Swinson was taken relatively late, but we have to keep a constant editorial eye out for the best possible panel and this can of course mean last-minute alterations.

To ensure the widest range of political views are heard there are occasions across the series when nationalists or minority parties are invited onto the panel". We'd like to assure you that we've registered your complaint on our audience log.

This is a daily report of audience feedback that's circulated to many BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers. The audience logs are seen as important documents that can help shape decisions about future programming and content. Thanks again for taking the time to contact us. Regards BBC Complaints

The bit I have highlighted in bold seems to be their main justification and yet it seems very vague and generic. Has anyone got any idea what he's talking about? The fact we opposed the Iraq war and a question on that was almost bound to come up strongly rebuffs his point about Lib Dems being "part of the central political consensus".

Anyway, I doubt the people who complained will be satisfied with this but hopefully the complaints will make this sort of thing less likely to happen in the future.

It's also worth noting that when I lodged my complaint with the duty log, the fact that there were two non-politicians on the panel when Jo was being dropped seemed unfair even to the chap who was logging it!

Me saying words on the wireless. Sort of.

I seem to be making a habit these days of calling into Iain Dale's internet radio show. I was at it again this week.

I called in to pick up on a theme that Jonathan Shepherd of Tory Radio had started earlier on in the programme about MPs expenses. He felt that the MPs expenses thing has now gone far enough and MPs have become an easy target (he has blogged about it here). He felt that there are very few if any MPs who will try and defend their colleagues for fear that something will be found in their expenses.

I spoke in agreement with Jonathan's views but I went further and suggested that there will be something in the expense claims of all MPs that can be spun negatively. Whether it’s a paper clip, bath plug or in the case of Jo Swinson, nothing but a receipt that happened to have make up on it (which she never claimed for - it was on the same receipt as something else legitimate). That didn’t stop The Telegraph the Guardian and the BBC from smearing her.

The time has come for this to end now. the Tax Payer’s Alliance was going after someone recently because of claims for a training course for a member of staff. Are we now saying that MP’s staff should not be allowed to go on training courses? Are we trying to turn MPs into the worst employers in the country? Enough!

You can hear me on the podcast of the show here. I am on around the last 20 minutes.

BBC Question Time Live Chat - 28th May 2009

It's back to the usual time for BBC Question Time today and hence the Live Chat on this blog will start at 10:30pm.

I am really looking forward to tonight's episode which features Caroline Flint, Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan (famous for having torn Gordon Brown a new one!), Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson Jo Swinson (go Jo!), Green Party leader Caroline Lucas, UKIP leader Nigel Farage, and French businessman Pierre-Yves Gerbeau.

You can also follow people's comments on Twitter via the #bbcqt hashtag (you can also follow me here on Twitter by the way - I will try to join in the tweets too!).

Liberal Democrat Voice also always have an open thread for BBC Question Time which is usually posted just before the start of the programme.

The chat has now finished for this week. You can see what we said in the re-run below.

We will be back next week, please join us and in the meantime I will be on Twitter during the week if you want to follow me for more political microblogging!