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.

Lib Dem Blog of the Year!

I was very surprised and honoured to win the Lib Dem Blog of the Year award at the BOTYs held here in Brighton last night. I have only been blogging on and off in the last year for family reasons that regular readers will know about but I have dipped in and out with my thoughts/rants as and when I have felt that I have something to say. It means a lot to me that people have nominated this blog and I would also like to thank the judges.

The other shortlisted blogs in this category were Caron’s Musings by Caron Lindsay, The Ramblings of Neil Monnery by Neil Monnery and A View from Ham Common by Richard Morris, all of which I regularly read and and enjoy and any of whom would have been worthy winners.

Congratulations also to the winners in the other categories:


Best new Liberal Democrat blog (started since 1st September 2011)
The Libertine, edited by Morgan Griffith-David

Best blog from a Liberal Democrat holding public office (The Tim Garden Award)
A Lanson Boy by Cllr Alex Folkes (Launceston Central)

The Andrew Reeves award for Best use of social media/e-campaigning by a Liberal Democrat
Bears for Belarus by Liberal Youth

Best non-Liberal Democrat politics blog
Everyday Sexism


My prize is a 25 minute one on one interview with Nick Clegg tomorrow. Hopefully I can think of some insightful questions to ask him. Feel free to make suggestions!

Linkage for Saturday, 22nd September 2012

Andrew Mitchell's sense of entitlement is truly shocking – Telegraph Blogs - Surely he'll be out before the end of the weekend?

One big rule if you're writing about politics - Pretty much agree with everything Andrew says here

The amount of time and effort that must have gone into this massive scrollable xkcd picture is incredible - Good way to waste half an hour!

Clegg and coalition six months on - Great post analysing LDs + coalition (good to see @jamesgraham on politics again!)

Death by regulation: the EU ban on low-risk oral tobacco « Clive Bates blog - Another example of making the less bad the enemy of the worst?

A rather enterprising way to raise money for the Lib Dems

Linkage for Thursday, 20th September 2012

Our debate on welfare reform is a dismal scandal - Spectator Blogs - Alex Massie on top form

UK government is squatting on 1.67 million unused IPv4 addresses - Not sure about the maths here. Can each individual IP address really be worth nearly $100?

Does Romney seriously think he can spend next 5 weeks running on slogan of “I’m gonna get you suckers”? via @DPJHodges

If Toynbee's rhetoric today was actually true wouldn't we essentially be living in a fascist state? - Polly goes way over the top. I'm not sure she's giving herself any further hyperbole headroom for if we ever have a Tory majority government again.

As much as I agree with Peter Reynolds' comments here, it is surely not the place of the police to make political statements?


And just in case you missed it, here's Kelvin MacKenzie getting a taste of his own doorstepping medicine from Channel 4's Alex Thomson:

Why I can't take the opposition seriously

I'm sorry.

I have tried.

Really I have.

But they oppose absolutely everything the government does. Everything. Even the things that were in their own manifesto. Or if they can't find a way to directly oppose it (because they agree with it) it's "the wrong time" or "it's too fast" or "too slow".

In some ways it reminds me of a jaded spouse who constantly niggles away trying to undermine their partner, scoring petty points for slights either real or imagined that have long since been forgotten by everyone except them.

This matters. It matters because this is the sort of thing that really turns people off politics. All they ever hear are politicians having a go at each other, slagging each other off and pretending that they, and only they have all the right answers (and their opponents are wrong about everything).

It also matters because it helps to polarise the debate. There are two and only two views. The government and the opposition. The plethora of nuance rarely gets a look-in when the tub-thumpers with their bully-pulpits are in full throated voice.

It's also turning me off.

I very rarely read opinion pieces by front-bench spokespeople of any party these days. There's not really any point. They just parrot the party line accentuating the good in their proposals and the bad in their opponents. People who were really interesting to read before they were front-line politicians like Michael Gove, David Willetts, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg have to play this game.

It's a silly, silly game.

When Stephen Twigg responded to the government's proposals on examinations yesterday I knew exactly what he was going to say. Of course there are some problems with the government's proposals. There were reasons why we changed from O-Levels to GCSEs in 1988 and some of the old problems still apply. But there is some merit in them too. It is far too easy to cheat on coursework these days and the changes will attempt to address that problem. There are also long overdue attempts to address grade-inflation. But Twigg just attacked, and attacked and attacked.

I've met Stephen Twigg. He's a nice, moderate sort of chap. But he too has to play this game. The government are wrong, wrong, wrong and the opposition are right, right, right.

I surely can't be the only person who would respect oppositions if they sometimes just agreed with some of what the government was doing. Not in total. They could of course suggest changes that might improve things (as almost always happens in committee quietly and gently aware from the glare of the camera and the microphone). But they could just sometimes say "Do you know what, we basically agree with this. Let's move on.". I would definitely respect them more if they did this. More importantly I would then be willing to give them a fairer hearing when they then strongly opposed something. The problem at the moment is that we face Mandy Rice-Davies syndrome. They would say that wouldn't they? So why should I be bothered to listen? I can't even be sure if they really believe what they are saying or if they are just opposing for opposition's sake.

I should end by acknowledging that it is not just Labour who do this. The other parties are also as guilty of this sort of politicking. I did used to call for more measured debate when the Lib Dems were not in government but I recognise that my own party would sometimes play games like this. And as a result they did themselves a disservice.

We always hear how politicians are trying to engage the public more in debates. They are failing at the moment. A different approach is surely worth a try?

Isn't it?

Linkage for Sunday, 16th September 2012

“They are the hoodlums who took a football match and turned it into 23 years of torment.” - Excellent piece from Fleet Street Fox on the real hooligans of Hillsborough

I look forward to screaming tabloid headlines correcting the massive scaremongering - Turns out IDS's "estimate" about benefit tourism was out by a factor of more than 10

An accountable algorithm for running a secure random checkpoint - Great idea but I suspect the TSA and other border agencies want to keep the "randomness" for themselves

Publishers Hate Money, Clearly - Andrew Hickey on his frustration with being unable to buy books in the format he wants when he wants


The police must no longer be immune from radical reform | Andrew Rawnsley

Catch, catch, the horror taxi...

One of the best hours of radio I have heard in the last year came not from a radio station but actually via a podcast from "Talk About the Passion", a podcasting collective who make recordings about aspects of British culture of which they are passionate.

The one that I enjoyed the most was from Tim Worthington and Ben Baker about the "Video Nasty" phenomenon. You can download it here.

Anyone coming of age in the 1980s or older will remember the furore from the media and politicians about the fact that people could get hold of in some cases fairly dubious (but in lots of cases relatively harmless) videos. A list was compiled which became known as the Video Nasty list and attempts were made to ban them from sale.

I certainly remember the coverage and I also remember watching a few somewhat dodgy vids myself around that time procured from "Dave's Video Van" that used to do the rounds in Runcorn, the town I grew up in. However I never really knew all the details but Tim's encyclopedic knowledge of the subject coupled with Ben's enthusiastic presenting style (and to be fair he seems to know a fair bit about the subject too) makes for a fascinating listen. The way Tim puts certain things into context too that totally hit the nail on the head is noteworthy too. For example he goes into detail about how jarring it was to go from the end credits to a screen of black and white snow and often by the time you had finished the film at night time there were no channels broadcasting during the '80s which made the end of the watching experience somewhat eerie.

There is also lots and lots of detail about the political machinations around the whole Nasty episode and an informative description of how one of the trials trying to prosecute a distributor spectacularly collapsed as the judge essentially accused the Attorney General of having wasted public money.

If you are interested at all in 1980s popular culture I highly recommend listening to this excellent analysis of one of the most memorable moral panics this country has ever witnessed.

Owen Jones and Kelvin MacKenzie

I was debating with Owen Jones on Twitter last night. He made what I thought was a rather intemperate comment about how Ed Miliband had given a nod to some of the positive things that Margaret Thatcher had done

Owen appears to have deleted the tweet from his timeline so this is from memory but it was along the lines of

"Ed Miliband praising Thatcher is the equivalent of telling Labour supporters to f**k off".

I thought this was rather odd and as I read the piece in the Telegraph Owen was referring to I could not see "praise" as such. Instead Miliband was paying tribute to how she created an era of aspiration which is surely pretty uncontroversial.

The reason for the confusion became apparent soon afterwards:

Ah, the quote I was sent re: Thatcher wasn't Ed Miliband, it was a quote wrongly attributed to him. My mistake
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) September 14, 2012

He was sent a quote by a source who turned out to have been wrong. Fair enough a few minutes later he corrected himself.

Almost at that very same moment, Owen was on Radio 5 laying into Kelvin MacKenzie for having published the Hillsborough piece without verifying that his sources were accurate. I totally agree with Owen that MacKenzie is a vile individual who deserves to be vilified for what he did.

But if I was Owen, I'd be a little bit more careful about checking what my own sources are sending me before flying off the handle with vituperative tweets.

He wouldn't want to get a reputation for in any way acting like the former Sun editor.

Tim is a great President but he should be challenged

There is a small head of steam building up behind the idea that Tim Farron should not be returned to the position of Lib Dem President unopposed in the incipient round of internal party elections.

Tim has been a great President in my view. He (usually) gets the tone right on issues and he is an excellent media performer. He is also very good at engaging with the party grass-roots both in face-to-face and online fora.

However I agree that he should be challenged for the Presidency for the following reasons:

1. No matter how good someone is in a position, even if they are the likely winner (as I suspect Tim would be even if challenged) it can only help to make them raise their game further, to ensure their views on issues are made clear and where necessary challenged.
2. An election such as this is a good opportunity for other people in the party to raise their profile, both internally with members but also more widely. The party is in government so who fills this position has wider consequences as they will be presiding over a party that has executive power. For this reason there will be heavier coverage of this than in elections before 2010.
3. I think it is a chance for someone who is not and has not previously been a parliamentarian to have a shot. My gut tells me it would be better if the winner was not a current or former MP or peer (although in practice this has never happened since the current party's formation in 1988). We have lots of talent within the party and it would be a chance for some of that to shine through. For example strong campaigners who just missed out on winning seats in previous elections such as Bridget Fox, Katy Gordon and Ed Fordham amongst many others would be worthy candidates.

But perhaps most important of all we are the Liberal Democrats!. For a position as important as party President it simply doesn't look good for someone to walk into the job without an election, no matter how good they have been.

Linkage for Thursday, 13th September 2012

Mitt Romney's ill-judged attack on Obama over Libya backfires | Ana Marie Cox via @guardian - Methinks he'll come to regret that smirk

Boris Johnson said: “I barely understand it, but information will spout unstoppably from these gizmos.” - Genius!

Stumbling and Mumbling: Conservatives - support unions! - Excellently thought provoking piece from Mr Dillow as per

Drug use is an issue for society, not the criminal justice system - Sense, sense and more sense

The school that swapped its laptops for iPads… and wants to switch back - Shows how jumping into purchasing IT equipment as part of a fad can come back to bite you in the arse

Edwina Currie – so hilariously self-centred that it’s hard to keep a straight face - Good distinction made here between selfish and self-centred


That Kelvin MacKenzie apology in full:

In memory of our little baby Olly

As some of you will know our 9 1/2 month old baby Oliver died in July.

My wife's cousin, Tim and two of his friends are running a Triathlon this Sunday and are very kindly raising money for the Friends of PICU, a charity that raises funds to help with equipment, staff and other things like toys for critically ill children in Southampton PICU. Olly spent several weeks in that unit and we were very grateful for all the help and support we were given some of which was funded by this charity.

So if you are able to we would very much appreciate it if you could make a small donation to the efforts of Tim and his friends which will go towards helping other families who are currently in a similar situation to that which we have experienced in the last year.

You can make a donation here

Thank you very much.

Mark and Nic Thompson.

Linkage for Tuesday, 11st September 2012

Is the fact that the party was advertised on Facebook relevant? - A terrible tragedy but I'm failing to see how the Facebook part of it is relevant. When parties were organised using Royal Mail and someone was stabbed outside one the Post Office wasn't an integral part of the investigation.

C4′s Gary Gibbon: Tory plots against Cameron continue - Heard it all before. Brown was always given "a few more months"

Can Labour *do* pluralist politics? - I've been wondering this too

How Upsetting : Maria Miller and the political internet meme - It's scary how easily blatant lies can go viral

Looks like Dan Poulter, the new health minister may have hugely exagerrated his working hours when a junior doctor.

Susan Greenfield in non-evidence based ranting about t'internet shocker - Genotripe

History And Anatomy Of A Silly Drug Ban - Falkvinge on Infopolicy - Ahhhhh

Renowned author not considered credible source on one of his own books by Wikipedia

Comedians using their fans for coordinated, safetyinnumbers bullying – Cook'd and Bomb'd Comedy Chat

That's it. I am done defending this bunch of unmentionables called a government - Paul's had enough

This is why drugs policy is how it is

There was a fascinating poll published in The Guardian this weekend showing that 77% of MPs do not think current drugs policy is working but that only 31% of them would consider relaxing the current laws. This was done in secret of course. Had they been on the record I suspect far fewer would have put their heads above the parapet.

As I often do with the articles I had a flick through some of the comments below, the vast majority of which were sensible pleas for relaxing of the laws. But one stood out for me in particular (from Craig 67220):

"...The problem is that the media would refuse to support a law that would rob them of easy front page headlines: you can't really print a story based on the stigma of drug use if those drugs aren't so taboo. Sure, abuse would still make headlines, but if smoking a joint or sniffing coke or taking a few pills is seen as on a par as having a pint, or a smoke, it becomes less of an issue...."

Leveson has shown just how amoral newspapers can be in their pursuit of stories that will guarantee sales. Time and again we have seen that increasing circulation takes priority over any sort of propriety. We saw it again recently with the Sun's decision to publish photos of Prince Harry naked whilst on holiday and supposedly in private. There was no public interest in these, they simply helped increase circulation briefly.

I actually wrote a piece about the amorality of The Daily Mail a few years ago regarding their approach to campaigning on the HPV vaccine. They campaigned against it in England, and for it in Ireland. The same vaccine. The same newspaper. Two opposing campaigns. The only rationale that makes any sense regarding this is that they must have thought an anti-campaign here would sell more papers but that a pro-campaign in Ireland would serve the same ends. That is completely and totally amoral. Playing with the health of young girls for financial gain.

There must surely be a fair bit of truth in Craig's comment. Of course if drugs were legal then all those tabloid splashes about some or other pop star snorting cocaine and the "My Drugs Hell" confessionals would be less marketable. They'd still shift copy of course, problems with the legal drug alcohol still does but drugs have an extra cachet because the frisson of their illegality. Ironically this same sort of frisson is one of the things that can perversely encourage young people to try drugs in the first place as an old friend of mine reminded me this weekend.

The fact that so many MPs can (privately) acknowledge our current drugs laws are failing and yet simultaneously refuse to engage fully with the debate about what to do to improve the situation shows what a mess we are in. The salacious tabloid agenda surely has to take a fair bit of the blame for this. Any politician openly voicing these concerns is shot down by those exact same newspapers that profit so heavily from the status quo.

It doesn't take a genius to see why that should be the case.

Linkage for Thursday, 6th September 2012

Do we have to be so macho?

The UK's attitude to computer education needs a reboot - This. Oh so much this.

Bill Clinton: The Great Communicator on Top Form - Spectator Blogs- Excellent analysis of Slick Willie's continuing appeal from Alex Massie

The blogpost I was pretty much going to write myself on why Nick Harvey should not have been knighted - Stephen Tall saved me the job!

I can't imagine how much time this must have taken... - Cast of Mad Men "sing" Rick Astley

Linkage for Wednesday, 5th September 2012

It's time to end the Coalition - Hard to argue with some of this from Nick Barlow although I disagree with his conclusion

100 Oldest .COM domain names

Relativistic Baseball

Shocking story about Samsung's alleged treatment of bloggers

Why I support the reappointment of David Laws

So David Laws is reportedly back in the government as an education minister. OK, it's not a cabinet role but in my view it is a well deserved return for one of the Lib Dem's best MPs.

I debated this situation on LBC yesterday with Peter Oborne chaired by the presenter, former Sunday Express political editor Julia Hartley-Brewer. You can listen to it below:

listen to ‘Here's @MarkReckons debating Peter Oborne on LBC on David Laws' expenses’ on Audioboo

I had initially thought the discussion was going to be more wide-ranging but it became clear quickly that the focus was solely on David Laws and with particular focus on the reasons why he left the cabinet in the first place in May 2010. Both Peter and Julia were of the opinion that he should not return. Julia seemed to think that really he should never be allowed back into public office. Peter was more nuanced and accepted that David's motives were to protect his privacy rather than for financial gain but that he needed to have subjected himself to the voters once more before returning to office (in the same way that Cecil Parkinson did in the 1980s and also David Blunkett did in 2005, although he acknowledged that this convention has not always been followed e.g. Mandelson).

I tried to argue that David claimed in the way he did in order to protect the fact of his sexuality. Julia did not accept this and even went so far as to agree with a caller later on who used the term "thief" when describing him. I just simply think this is not right. I will try and explain why.

When David Laws first moved into the house for which he made the claims, the person he rented the house off was his landlord. There was nothing wrong with him claiming at that time. At some point in the next few years he began a relationship with his landlord. At first this was OK as well but in 2006 a new rule was brought in which meant that MPs were not allowed to claim through this mechanism if the person they were paying was their partner. It is from this point onwards that the fact that he continued to claim was a breach of the rules.

It is worth pointing out that there is another legitimate mechanism through which David could have claimed if he had declared that his landlord was his partner and would have been entitled to even more than he actually claimed. But of course if he had done this he would have been outing himself. David was not out at the time and did not wish to be for his own personal reasons*. So he decided not to use this other mechanism.

I have seen people also say that he could have simply stopped claiming. That is indeed true, he could have done. But the big, big problem then is that suddenly, when the rules about partners change he would have instantly stopped claiming. He might as well have painted a big sign outside his house saying "I am in a relationship with my landlord.". I fully expect that several tabloid newspapers would have taken this as a green light to publish stories to out David Laws.

The inquiry into David's conduct agreed that he was motivated by his wish to protect his privacy. He was in a no-win situation after his circumstances and then the rules changed in 2006. It is clear that he was in breach of the rules. He resigned and paid back the money. He has been on the back benches for nearly two and a half years.

I think the fact that he could have claimed more through a different mechanism speaks volumes about what was really going on here. I know some people will never be persuaded but I really would be saying this if it was an MP of any party in the situation.

I welcome the reappointment of David Laws to the government.



*Julia repeatedly said on the radio yesterday that she could not understand why someone in this day and age would want to protect their privacy about their sexuality. With all due respect, Julia does not have direct insight into the pressures individual people can be under from e.g. family and friends. Just because the circles she moves in are accepting does not mean everyone else is and it is not up to any of us to judge who should and shouldn't reveal private details about this facet of their lives.

An appeal for the NHS

Now that the dust has settled a little bit on the NHS reforms I have a request.

I tried to pay close attention to the detail of what the changes mean as the bill was going through parliament. Lord knows we had enough coverage at the time (although there was often much more heat than light I fear). As far as I can tell the changes are fairly modest and essentially involve more devolution of power to local GP practices and some extension of private providers running NHS services (which was also done by previous administrations). Everything that was free at the point of use before will still be free at the point of use and again as far as I can tell the NHS budget has been protected (albeit there will be some efficiency savings with the money ploughed back into the NHS budget).

So, can someone please tell me, with links to evidence, how the NHS is being "abolished" or "destroyed". I have seen many people claim this, often Labour activists but I have never seen proof of it, or even a convincing prima facie case.

Just in case anyone here thinks I am being provocative, I am not. I am genuinely asking. I am a member of one of the parties in government in this country and if I really thought that my government had enacted a bill that would end the NHS and free at the point of use healthcare, I would leave the party and vigorously campaign against it.

So I am appealing for someone to prove to me that these claims about the NHS being destroyed are true.

Anyone?

Linkage for Saturday, 1st September 2012

Adverse selection in political discourse - Another masterclass from Mr Dillow

Pot and IQ - A Flawed Debate - Yes, yes, 1000 times yes!

As Ed Miliband knows, Labour must learn to forgive the Lib Dems - Most sensible Toynbee column I've read in years

Bookies won’t pay out granny’s Olympics bet - According to the BetFred account on Twitter they have already paid her: Wonder how much the 1700+ comments on the post contributed to that ;)

The Sun's interview with violinist Nicola Benedetti was a masterclass in sexism (via @AGBear) - This almost seems like a parody

BBC News - Ex-sceptic says climate change is down to humans - Interesting

So Apple have managed to successfully enforce patents for smooth scrolling and double tapping - Is that really right?

“Don’t declare your support for monarchy, then clutch at your pearls when members turn out to like partying in Vegas”

Is the Cabinet Office mathematically illiterate?

Too many civil servants, politicians and celebrities are receiving honours, a report by a group of MPs has said.

I am sure this is true. How many "Sir" Bufton Tuftons are there at the top of the civil service for example? Proportionately many more than in my view deserve it and the MPs agree:

"We believe that no-one should be honoured for simply 'doing the day job', no matter what that job is," the committee said.

But the Cabinet Office has come out to bat defending the current way of doing things:

The Cabinet Office denied honours were dominated by politicians and celebrities, with 72% of the awards in the last honours list going to people who were actively involved in charitable or voluntary work.

Wow! 72%! That's almost three quarters! Fantastic! So I guess we should all just shut up about it.

Oh, but hang on a minute. The Cabinet Office seems to have made a fundamental mistake here.

I don't have the exact figures but I am sure if we were to get together a list of the top civil servants, politicians and celebrities who are the ones in the frame for those 28% of remaining honours each year the total would not come to more than about 20,000. It can't really. There are only 650 MPs and about 800 Lords. Then there are senior members of local government and quangos. On top of that we have senior civil servants, again surely numbering in the hundreds or low thousands at a maximum. The celebrities are also going to be limited to the top or "most famous" in their field. If anything 20,000 is probably being generous as the pool from which those to be honoured in these fields can be plucked.

Now contrast that with the pool of "ordinary" people who do things like volunteering in their local community, who do things for charities and who go the extra mile in their jobs as teachers, nurses and all sorts of other vital services. Again it's hard to come up with an exact figure but it must surely be well over a million. Local communities have lots of people who do all sorts of things that go unrewarded and it's hardly a stretch to say that 1/60 people across the country should be eligible for some sort of recognition like this. So let's say 1,000,000 to be conservative.

Now back to that 72% figure. The most recent honours list awarded them to roughly 800 people in the UK. So roughly 220 went to "The Great and the Good" and about 580 went to everyone else.

Or to put it another way, if you are one of the 20,000 then you had a roughly 1% chance of getting an award. And if you are one of everyone else then you had a roughly 0.05% chance of getting one. So you are around 20 times more likely to get an honour if you are a politician, senior civil servant or celebrity than if you are someone who has devoted lots of time to going the extra mile in your local community.

That the Cabinet Office would even try to make this argument suggests that either they are mathematically illiterate or institutionally incapable of recognising the massive bias in their own systems.

The cannabis/IQ research shows why it should be legalised and regulated

There are reports today of the results of a long term study conducted in New Zealand which show a link between heavy use of cannabis before the age of 18 and a concomitant reduction in IQ levels.

This is indeed worrying and it is a good thing that such a study has been conducted.

I have not seen much political reaction to this yet but I am willing to bet a sizable amount of money that the bulk of it from the mainstream parties will be in the vein of "This is why cannabis needs to be kept illegal" and that this somehow "proves" that the current laws in this area are correct.

That is the wrong conclusion to draw from this research.

A problem has been identified. That young people who use a certain drug heavily before the age of 18 are at risk of damaging their brain. It would appear that once past that age that risk is much less severe, if there at all (the main problem seems to be with the developing brain). So what we should be trying to achieve if anything is a reduction in the number of young people taking the drug. The current legal regime does not do this. It is very easy in pretty much any area of the country to obtain cannabis, for people of any age including teenagers. Those who supply it are not interested in checking the age of the person consuming it.

If we follow the evidence here, there is little reason to stop adults from taking cannabis but a big incentive to try and stop children. So if cannabis was legalised, regulated and sold in a way similar to alcohol (with tough penalties for supplying to minors) with a simultaneous widespread public education campaign showing why it is dangerous for children to take it surely this would be more effective than our current system? It would make it harder for children to obtain the drug and for once, the public education from the government would actually be based on evidence. Over time this would improve the credibility of these laws rather than the blanket "All drugs are equally bad, Mkaaay" message at the moment which most people and especially children simply do not believe.

For those who disagree with me on this, please just consider these points:

1. The current laws have very little deterrent effect on young people taking cannabis.
2. How can it possibly help somebody who may have done something that will have damaged their brain and lowered their IQ to give them a criminal record? Surely all that will do is blight their life chances even further?

We need to be much smarter in our approach to this problem. Sadly though I fully expect this more nuanced approach to be ignored in favour of more of the same. In fact I fear an even stronger "crackdown" from this in a misguided attempt to try and discourage children from taking cannabis.

Why should I listen to Katie Ghose?

I've never met Katie Ghose. I'm sure she's a very nice person. But why am I still receiving e-mails from her under the auspices of the Electoral Reform Society as if last year's Yes2AV campaign never happened, and wasn't a disaster?

I've kept quiet(ish) about this since last May apart from a brief rant shortly afterwards and I guess I have been hoping that even if there was not going to be a public accounting for what the campaign did wrong, at least behind the scenes there might have been some? But it's been 15 months now and Ms Ghose who was the head of the "Yes" campaign is still in place as head of the ERS.

I don't know a great deal about the internal machinations of that organisation and the associated groups that formed the "Yes" camp but they managed to turn a lead in the public polls for "Yes" in the months running up to the plebiscite into a humiliating 32% to 68% drubbing. Why is nobody being held accountable for this?

Yes, I know the "No" campaign was sneaky and evile and all the rest of it but there was lots "Yes" did wrong. LOTS. And if the person who was appointed head of the campaign is simply allowed to carry on as if nothing happened in her position as head of the main organisation campaigning for electoral reform in this country then it speaks volumes about the cliquey nature of the cohort of people in charge. In fact it is starting to make me wonder how rigorous the process of deciding who was best to head up the "Yes" campaign was in the first place. It is starting to smell quite a bit of Buggin's Turn.

I'm not saying everyone associated with the leadership of "Yes" should be summarily dismissed. But please, can we have some sort of accountability for what went wrong? At the very least an acknowledgement and an apology to all of those like me who beavered away at street and grassroots level trying to persuade others to vote Yes. We were badly let down.

Otherwise I will find it very hard to take any campaigning material I receive from this organisation in the future.

The problem Ms Harman is that your government did not listen

Harriet Harman has been filling column inches recently with a mea culpa regarding the 2005 Gambling Act, claiming that Labour made a mistake introducing this bill and that they should reverse the measures that have led to a growth in problem gambling, particularly in poorer areas.

Good for her! She's decided that something her government did was wrong and that action is needed to address the problems caused.

She says:

If we had known then what we know now, we wouldn't have allowed this, because it's not just ruining the high street, it's ruining people's lives.

I got the most heartrending letters and emails and calls that I've ever had in 30 years of being an MP, just saying 'Please do something about this. It's ruined my life, it's ruined my family, it's really dangerous and the problem is it's getting worse and that's why we need the law to be changed so that something can be done about it'.

This made me pause though as my political memory banks started whirring into action. I remember the political arguments about this bill at the time and I was sure that plenty of politicians did flag up the potential problems with the bill at the time of the debates before it became an act.

Sure enough a quick trawl of Hansard around February 2005 when it was being debated has turned up some interesting interventions in the Lords. For example Lord Roberts of Llandudno said:

It is clear that gambling does harm. Even the Minister himself, in his evidence to the Joint Committee, admitted that the increased gambling which would follow from the Bill could lead to more problems and more problem gamblers. The amount of gambling is related, of course, to the number of people who suffer in that way. If gambling was not harmful at all, there would be no need for any regulation. The fact that there is regulation means that there is knowledge that gambling is harmful.

...

The Joint Parliamentary Committee stated:

"Almost all the evidence we have received points to the fact that this legislation would increase the number of people in the United Kingdom with a gambling problem".

...

Moving from the high-level casinos to the more humble slot machines, the director of the Rhode Island gambling treatment programme, Mr Bob Breen, said only last week that slot players are more likely to become addicted—and faster. They say, for instance, "It's only a nickel. How much can I blow?". He said that within a year they have lost their investments, they have lost their retirement, they are getting divorced and they are stealing from their employer.

The extended opportunities of the Gambling Bill could have a totally detrimental effect on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. When the Bill states that it will safeguard children from excessive gambling, how are we to safeguard the children of the families of gamblers? They will suffer deprivation, and all because of the Bill.

In other words exactly the sort of problems that Ms Harman is now saying "we wouldn't have done this if we had known" were predicted by many different people with evidence from other countries to back them up. There is another similar intervention within the same debate from Lord Phillips of Sudbury here too amongst many others.

So perhaps as well as campaigning for gambling law to be changed, Ms Harman should also campaign for something else that is sorely needed in our country. For governments to actually listen to their opponents during debate, reflect upon the evidence and agree much more often to pilot schemes to test their ideas.

I would take her much more seriously on this if I had any sense that genuine lessons about how poor Labour in government were at legislating based on actual evidence were really being learned as a result.

Why are Labour opposing what they did in office?

I know politics tends to be played in a certain way and that Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition are there to oppose. It's there in the title.

But it is remarkable just how many times Labour in opposition are now against almost exactly what they did when they themselves were in office. In some cases not just against them, but viscerally against them suggesting all manner of nefarious motives on the part of the EVIL CONDEMS for even considering them.

There's a good example today. It has been reported that the government is encouraging the NHS to use its expertise globally in order to make a profit from international markets for re-investment domestically. Sounds perfectly sensible to me to explore such opportunities, especially with a brand that is as strong globally as our National Health Service is.

Labour however have wasted no time at all in attacking the plans. Which is very odd because only 2 years ago, Andy Burnham, the then Labour Health Secretary was all in favour of pretty much exactly the same idea:

“A key part of responding to the economic challenge that the NHS faces will be realising the full potential of innovation, not only making effective use of our knowledge and skills at home, but also making money abroad that can be reinvested back into the NHS."

The Labour attack is based around this being the "wrong time" for such a change and that the "priority" should be sorting out the "mess" in the NHS. But If Burnham 2 years ago, in the midst of an economic crisis thought then was the right time for this and that it could form a "key part" of the NHS's economic challenge then I cannot for the life of me work out why now is the wrong time. Surely Labour think the NHS has got worse in the last 2 years so anything that can bring more money in for reinvestment (as they clearly thought this would when in office) should be a good thing?

This apparent contradiction has been reported widely today and I have seen a few Labour activists make an attempt to defend the new position usually along the lines of the "approach" that the current government is taking being wrong.

Frankly this is a load of rubbish. It is becoming ever more clear that Labour are going to oppose anything and everything that they think they can get political capital out of regardless of how hypocritical they are being. The theory seems to be that if they shout loudly enough against all these policies, the fact they used to be for them will be forgotten. They should be held to account for this, otherwise how are we going to know what we'll get if they end up back in government again?


Andy Burnham being interviewed about this subject today:

Why talk of a political "Olympic Bounce" is facile

"Labour lead narrows as Tories enjoy Olympics bounce"

"Boris uses Olympic bounce to taunt government"

Bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce.

Talking about whether or not a politician or a party has had one as a result of the Olympics is the epitome of silly season nonsense.

Firstly, any "bounce" is bound to be transitory. I'd be amazed if any blips in the polls were sustained beyond the next few weeks. And the next general election isn't until 2015. Even the Corby by-election and the PCC elections are not for another 3 months by which time any poltical Olympic feel-good factor will have petered well out.

More importantly, staging the Olympics was a massive effort from hundreds of thousands of people across all walks of life, politicians, engineers, architects, security services, entertainment, sports people and of course the tens of thousands of volunteers who did such a wonderful job stewarding the event. The idea that all of this effort can be distilled down into a political advantage for Boris or Dave is utterly risible. In terms of high profile politicians I would suggest Tony Blair (whose eleventh hour intensive lobbying of the IOC in July 2005 is likely to be the thing that tipped the balance in my view), Tessa Jowell, Seb Coe and even Gordon Brown (who as a powerful Chancellor enabled it to happen) should be in line before Cameron anyway. And as for Boris, Ken Livingstone should get at least as much credit for similar reasons to Blair; his motives were around regeneration but his commitment to this was admirable. Most of those politicians you will note are Labour, not Conservative.

All in all, the fact that the narrative is now shifting to whether the PM and the Mayor can get political brownie points from any of this shows how shallow our discourse has become.

The Olympics was a fantastic spectacle and a great example of what this country is and can do. Any kudos should be for the UK as a whole, not any one individual.

The Lib Dems are a very odd sort of "Power-hungry"

I keep seeing the phrase "power-hungry" used in conjunction with the Lib Dems. Admittedly it is often amongst the frothing anti-coalition comments on a "Comment is Free" or "New Statesman" article but there is a perception that is gaining momentum that the Lib Dems have done and pretty much will do anything to get and retain power.

The thing is, that doesn't really make any sense, at least from a Westminster perspective.

Let's imagine that you are a fresh-faced Nick Clegg embarking on your political career in the mid-Nineties. You are working for the European Commission in various jobs and are then given a position as a policy adviser and speech writer for the Conservative appointed Trade Commissioner Leon Brittan. Now at this point your star is definitely on the rise and the possibility of winning a seat in the European Parliament is on the horizon given your experience and background. So, if you are truly power-hungry and wish to be a member of the Commons in a few years time and eventually in government do you:

a) Use your contacts through Mr Brittan to get yourself selected as a Tory candidate?
b) Plough your own furrow and try to get selected for a party that has never held power in Westminster in your entire lifetime?

Surely, someone who was obsessed with getting and retaining executive power would have done a)? But we know that Nick Clegg did b). What on Earth was he thinking, running for a party that since the end of WWII had had at most a few dozen MPs? Under the First Past the Post system that party was unlikely to be in a position to form a government in the following 20 or so years.

Or what if you were Vince Cable who actually did used to be a member of the Labour Party but defected to the SDP in 1982 and then stuck with that party as it became subsumed into the Liberal Democrats even when its poll ratings were in a statistical tie with zero, and his former party ended up in government for 13 years from 1997. Surely an unprincipled, power-hungry politician would have found an excuse to defect back to them? I'm sure a nice juicy cabinet position could have been found for him.

The same applies to Chris Huhne, Ed Davey, David Laws and countless other Lib Dem MPs and ministers. They all could have chosen a much easier path to power than joining the third party and then waiting for the electoral dice to fall the way of a coalition (which judging by historical standards is a very rare occurrence indeed). Instead they all stuck with the Lib Dems through thick and thin, opposition, ridicule and taunts of being irrelevant.

There must be another explanation then? Maybe, just maybe these politicians believed enough in the cause of their party to want to stick with it and even if only in opposition try to affect the national debate using the small platform it afforded? And then maybe, just maybe when the opportunity to be part of a government came along those same politicians weighed up the situation and decided in the national interest that it was best to form a stable coalition with the largest party in parliament largely for the sake of economic stability*?

Whether you believe that or not though, the idea that the Lib Dems are completely unprincipled and power addicted does not stand up to even cursory scrutiny. If the MPs that make up the party really were like that, they would never have been in the party in the first place.



*We will never know the counterfactual of what would have happened if they had declined but I bet it would not have been pretty - the markets would likely have punished our country for having delivered a hung parliament that then could not form a majority government programme.


This post was first published on Dale & Co.

Will the public ever accept coalitions?

Over the last couple of years I have had a few comments from my non-political friends (yes I have some!) along the lines of the Lib Dems cannot be trusted. When people who are usually not really that into politics say things like that it makes my ears prick up because it demonstrates that something about the subject has "cut through". Unfortunately in this case it is something pretty negative about the party of which I am a member.

It should probably not be surprising that that message has resounded in this way, after all much of the media and the entirety of the Labour Party (and mischievous elements of the Tory Party) have been saying as much ever since the Lib Dems entered government. And of course there is a kernel of truth in it. The party said one thing before the general election and then in a number of key areas did something different after the election.

But the third party was never going to be able to do anything except that if they were to go into government. They were never going to get a majority and therefore they were always going to have to compromise in all sorts of areas.

That the Lib Dems have "broken their promises" and "Clegg cannot be trusted" has become as much of the background mood music of the body politic of this country as "Blair lied about Iraq" or "Thatcher did not care much about society" were during their respective eras. As much as I might want to bang on on here about how the party had to compromise, I might as well be micturating into a tornado.

But this fact really does raise a much wider issue. Will the public ever accept coalitions? Because it is far from clear that what they are annoyed about is that Clegg et al made "the wrong compromises". It actually seems like the fact that any compromises were made at all is what has damaged the party (and that would likely have been true no matter what the compromises and who the political partner was). This would apply to any parties forming a coalition in the future.

Perhaps we have just had single party government in this country for so long that, despite the talk before the election about the public wanting politicians to "get along" the truth is that they are so used to one entire programme being enacted that when the electoral arithmetic requires parties to work together the damage caused, especially to the junior partner is just simply too great.

I wish I was wrong about this but I fear I am right. Maybe the last two years shows that the UK is simply not interested in parties compromising? And if the polls are correct we might well end up with at least another decade of single party government again after 2015.

I suspect the electorate might prefer to be back on the surer ground such a government would afford.

Here's a crazy idea: Maybe we should let the electorate decide who become PCCs

There has been a lot of noise in the last few days about how terrible it is that Bob Ashford has been barred from standing as a Labour candidate to become a Police and Crime Commissioner in Avon and Somerset due to a crime he was convicted of when he was 13 years old 46 years ago. This is because of a rule that was included in the bill that created the positions whereby a candidate cannot stand if they have ever been convicted of an offence that could have resulted in them being sent to prison (even if they weren't). There are also others who have stood down as a result of this rule include the decorated Falklands war hero Simon Weston due to an offence he was convicted for when he was also a child.

As Mark Pack has pointed out, this is not an "unintended consequence" of the legislation but very much intended as the parliamentary record shows. This very point (candidates being barred due to offences committed when they were children) was specifically debated and there appeared to be broad parliamentary consensus that this was "the right thing to do".

As an aside, I find it intensely depressing that such illiberal laws can be passed through our parliament without any real understanding of how ridiculous the consequences of said laws will actually be in practice from those who are supposed to be legislative experts. I really hope this episode will give the unthinking authoritarians (in all parties) pause for thought the next time they are debating legislation.

Mark Ferguson has done a sterling job on LabourList in recent days highlighting the absurdity of this rule and calling for an urgent change. The Home Office has already indicated that nothing can be done until after the first set of elections in November.

On that LabourList posting linked to above there is an interesting debate in the comments. Some commenters agree the rule is wrong but there are others who point out that it is going to be difficult to define precisely where the bar should be. They suggest that ruling on what would be an acceptable and unacceptable criminal conviction will be tricky. They are essentially saying that there will always be edge cases that seem to fall on the wrong side (either way) wherever the line is drawn.

I agree it would be tricky. But here is a radical idea. The entire point of having these Police and Crime Commissioners was in order to allow voters to choose them. So why not allow the electorate to decide? If they consider a youthful misdemeanor by Mr Ashford should prevent him from becoming a PCC then they won't vote for him. You can certainly bet your bottom dollar that if Mr Ashford's opponents think it will count against him the details of it will be plastered all over leaflets. The same would apply for any of the other candidates who have withdrawn (or may do so in the future).

Perhaps instead though what we will find is that people who have had dealings with the law from the other side as youngsters but have learned their lesson and gone on to be highly productive and trustworthy members of society might just have something very useful to contribute to the role.

Stranger things have happened.

How the Lib Dem response to the doctrine of "Collective Responsibility" is screwing us

Compare and contrast:

“Of course, there is no reliance on our support for a Coalition Agreement commitment for progress on unrelated or other significant parallel constitutional formations. I have said that. There is no link; of course, there is no link.”

...and:

"Lords reform and boundaries are two, separate parliamentary bills but they are both part of a package of overall political reform. Delivering one but not the other would create an imbalance – not just in the Coalition Agreement, but also in our political system.
Lords reform leads to a smaller, more legitimate House of Lords. Boundary changes lead to a smaller House of Commons, by cutting the number of MPs. If you cut the number of MPs without enhancing the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Lords all you have done is weaken parliament as a whole, strengthen the executive and its overmighty government that wins."

Both of these statements were made by Nick Clegg in the last few months. The first one was at a Select Committee hearing in April where he also specifically said the words "There is no formal link" between Lords reform and the boundary changes.

I highlight this, not to embarrass the leader of my party (there will be plenty of others in Labour and the Conservatives queueing up to do that) but to highlight how our approach to collective responsibility within the government is now screwing us over.

i have been arguing for a long time that in public our ministers should have been making it clear that there are things we are doing that we would not do were we governing alone. I think the electorate are mature enough to accept this. But instead our approach seems to be to essentially "own" the entire government programme and to argue in favour of every element of it. This then leads to a situation with for example the boundary changes where Clegg can be painted as "having been for it, before he was against it" which is very damaging in politics.

If the approach had been to consistently explain that we were supporting the boundary changes as part of an overall package of constitutional change and all of it needed to go through (which is a perfectly reasonable position) it wouldn't seem like we were going back on anything now.

To be fair to Clegg there are examples including in the evidence to that committee where he did try to make this link but there are too many other examples where he has said things like "There is no link". The position has been too muddled.

This is not the only area where this has happened. For example Clegg has been quoted in the past as saying that Andrew Lansley is the "right man for the job" of Health Secretary. That's strange because before the election surely he though Norman Lamb was the right man, otherwise why was he Lib Dem spokesperson for health? I wonder why he felt the need to say this? He could have worded it along the lines of Lansley getting on with the job he was appointed by the PM to do or similar without endorsing him above all other possible ministers.

In the inevitable post-mortems that will come whenever this coalition finally ends I hope that our approach to collective responsibility comes under a sharp spotlight and we learn some important lessons. We are a separate party with a distinct identity. We need to find a way to make this clear, even when we are sharing power with another party.

What if a Lib Dem minister votes for the boundary changes?

An interesting hypothetical question thrown up as a consequence of a piece from Isabel Hardman on the Spectator blog which mentions a "senior Lib Dem MP" who is quoted as saying that the Lib Dems should support the boundary changes.

Now I don't know for sure if this MP is in the government and it is not clear that even if they are they will not fall into line with their party but what if they decided to vote against the Lib Dem party line on this? Would they technically be in breach of anything? With the vast majority of government ministers (Conservatives) likely voting for the changes, wouldn't they just be another minister voting with most of their colleagues?

As we're in unchartered territory I'm not sure what the answer would be.

Other than Nick Clegg would doubtless be very pissed off!

Does the Lords reform debacle make a coupon election more likely?

My first thought was "highly unlikely" but the more I am mulling it over the more I am wondering if the inevitable dynamics that will result from the latest coalition debacle could move things in that direction.

The first thing to note is that without the boundary changes Labour are now overwhelmingly favourite to win the next election outright, probably with a big majority. I know 3 years is a long time in politics but the idea that the Conservatives (and Lib Dems) are going to recover in a major way from their current lows with the economy in such a mess and austerity on the menu for several more years to come is somewhat fanciful.

The second point is that if Labour win in a big way in 2015 then the other two major parties can likely kiss goodbye to any chance of office for another political generation. We saw after 1997 how much the large majority cushioned Labour against future election losses. It could be 2030 before the Blues or Yellows are seriously contending for power again.

But of course it's a massive leap to go from that fairly sober reflection of reality to implementing a deal whereby the Conservatives and Lib Dems allow the coalition partner a free run at certain seats. It's all going to boil down to the following issues:

1) How much do Cameron and Clegg want to retain power? If they are serious about keeping their hands on the reins after 2015 they are going to have to very seriously think outside the box.
2) Even if they wanted to, how well could they control their respective parties in the country to adhere to any deal? There is significant and growing animosity amongst the grassroots of the coalition partners and the idea that PPCs in potentially winnable seats may have to stand aside "for the greater good" is likely to be very hard to swallow.
3) How would such a deal be treated by the electorate? I can certainly imagine Labour making all sorts of hay with the idea that the coalition was trying to stitch up the election.
4) What would the long term calculations be? For the Tories there may be less downside. They would get the chance to retain power rather than face a potential decade or more in the wilderness. But history suggests that for the Lib Dems were they to go along with a plan like this they could be subsumed by the larger political partner. And even before that it could easily cause a split with "Independent Liberal Democrats" leaving the party to fight on their own terms.

On balance I still think this probably won't happen but you never know. I've observed throughout my politically aware life that politicians will do almost anything to hold onto power. John Major clung on until the bitter end in 1997 and even announced a 6 week proroguement of parliament in order to just eke out another couple of weeks. Gordon Brown endured indignity after indignity to stay in a job that it would seem he didn't even really enjoy and even tried himself to form a coalition with a party whom he despised (and whose name he consistently got wrong!).

I do not underestimate the allure of power. Especially for those who already have their hands on the tiller.

Now perhaps the Tories will consult their members before writing their manifestos

One aspect of today's final confirmation that Lords reform is being dropped for this parliament that has not generated much comment is that just such a policy was part of the Conservative manifesto in 2010.

Given this, it is surely quite strange that nearly 100 of the party's MPs were willing to vote against it? It seems clear also that if things had progressed further, more Tories would have lined up against the measure. And when you include ministers who were likely supporting the measures under sufferance it wouldn't at all surprise me if less than half of the Parliamentary Conservative Party in the Commons actually supported this bill.

How has this come about? Surely a manifesto should reflect the view of the members of the party it purports to represent?

In the case of the Conservatives though they have always been a fairly top-down party. The manifesto was written by senior people within the shadow cabinet and their advisers and then essentially presented as a fait accompli. If their MPs and PPCs didn't like parts of it, essentially it is tough luck. They could of course have refused to stand as a Conservative candidate if they felt strongly enough but given the FPTP system that is never very likely to happen as an "Independent Conservative" candidate would just split the vote and probably let one of their opponents in. Far better from the perspective of an aspiring Tory parliamentarian to stand anyway but then oppose once in the Commons from a position of representing the "real Tory" view within the country. The problem is it leaves everyone else wondering where on earth we stand with respect to future manifesto commitments.

I hope that this episode makes the Conservative leadership think again about how their policy-making is formulated. It's all very well being clever-clever, trying to "triangulate" and appear to be "progressive". But if your MPs are not willing to vote for the measures then it just becomes an exercise in obfuscation and ultimately futility. Far better for everyone all round, including the voters to ensure that any future manifesto contains measures that are likely to achieve support within the body of MPs from their party that form the voting bloc within parliament?

Then we will all know what we are likely to be getting, rather than commitments that are then viscerally opposed by the very people who stood for election on the platform formed by them.

The Lib Dems may need to leave the government to stop the boundary changes

Now it is clear that Cameron is not going to be able to get enough of his backbenchers to support Lords reform there is lots of talk about how the quid pro quo for this will be the Lib Dems blocking the boundary changes. There is also talk about how the precise wording of the coalition agreement does not commit the Lib Dems to vote for the changes.

Even though it is dressed up in the language of principle, the argument essentially goes "You didn't deliver the change we wanted so we won't deliver the change you want.".

In some ways this is fair enough. The manner in which some Conservative MPs have parsed the coalition agreement to find a Clintonesque way of wriggling out of the spirit of the commitment to Lords reform has been low politicking at its worst. As a supporter of Lords reform (albeit one who could see a good argument for voluntarily delaying change ourselves) I would find some satisfaction in seeing the boundary changes voted down.

There is a problem with this idea though. Cameron really did try to get Lords reform through. He imposed a 3 line whip on his party to vote for the bill and the timetable. It failed because too many of his non-payroll MPs were prepared to vote against it (which is why the timetable motion was withdrawn as it was clear the government would lose).

If Clegg was to impose a 3 line whip on the vote for the boundary changes then straight away the Lib Dem payroll vote of 22 would have to support the changes (or resign from the government). I also suspect a number of backbench Lib Dems would either abstain or vote with the government. Some would doubtless rebel but it would not be enough to stop the changes*.

So the only way the Lib Dems could be sure of defeating the boundary changes would be to actually ensure all of their MPs voted against them. And I cannot see a realistic way that this could happen without triggering a chain of events that would lead to the end of the coalition.

It comes down to a matter of mathematics. The Conservative backbenchers can block legislation even if the government votes for it. The Lib Dems cannot do this. They don't have enough MPs.

I know that Cameron is determined to get this change through. Clegg cannot block it without making his entire party vote against it. We will soon reach the first (and probably last) impasse of the coalition sooner than most people thought.


*I am aware that a number of backbench Conservative MPs also do not want these changes to go through. It is possible for a scenario to play out where Clegg whips the Lib Dem payroll vote to vote for the changes but with a nod and a wink licenses his backbenchers to vote against leaving only a few Tory rebels required to torpedo the changes. The big problem with this though is not just that it would be blatantly obvious what had happened (which it would) but that I suspect Cameron has already war gamed this scenario. Now that the Lords reforms are dead, he has a big patronage carrot to offer any wavering MPs from his side. For this reason, I would suggest such a gambit on Clegg's part would fail. And I think he knows it.

David Cameron is now weaker than John Major

I'm not even talking about the fact that he has not been able to persuade his backbenchers to support a key plank of the coalition agreement, although that is pretty weak.

I'm referring to how he has steadfastly refused to move George Osborne from the Treasury brief. It has demonstrated just how hidebound his political room for manoeuvre has become.

I understand those who say Osborne is one of Cameron's oldest political friends. But Blair was old friends with Peter Mandelson and David Blunkett and he did what was necessary to remove them from their cabinet posts when the time came. And even John Major had the guts to remove Norman Lamont as Chancellor when it became clear he was a political liability in that role.

Most observers agree that Osborne has performed poorly as Chancellor. His budget earlier this year was a political disaster. Worse, Cameron knew it would be (specifically regarding the reduction of the 50p rate - he didn't want to do it) but gave Osborne enough rope to hang himself with. Now that he has done so, instead of letting him swing he has cut the rope and is giving him his undeserved political support.

Even worse still, other Prime Ministers just over 2 years into a parliament would likely have at least one more chance to remove an errant minister as reshuffles can be fairly frequent when one party is in power. But the nature of the current coalition makes it pretty unlikely there will be any more reshuffles before 2015. So this is the one chance that Cameron has to put someone politically and economically competent into No 11 (e.g. Philip Hammond) and he has flunked it.

Prime Ministers need to have a shaft of steel running through them. No matter who were close allies on the way up, a politician that wishes to retain power needs to be unsentimental about friendship. That he feels unable to do anything about Osborne demonstrates how weak he has now become.

When even John Major was able to do things you cannot it is surely time to think long and hard about your long term political strategy?

Lib Dems should park Lords reform. For now.

I am an enthusiastic supporter of electoral and constitutional reform in this country. I have been arguing for years that the First Past the Post system for the Commons is hopelessly out of date and unfair and that there is no place in our constitution for an unelected second chamber. I was delighted when the coalition agreement included action on the latter and heartened by Nick Clegg's various comments in the early days of this government that made it clear he was throwing his full weight as Deputy PM behind it.

But that was then. Now we are in a pretty parlous position regarding potential reform. The massive rebellion by Tory MPs a couple of weeks ago aided by Labour on the timetable has led to a great deal of uncertainty about whether anything like the currently proposed reforms will be able to get through parliament.

Putting aside the arguments for and against (they can be found across the internet not least in numerous posts and comments on this site) I think it is starting to look unlikely that we will be able to get the reforms we want through during our time in government. Unlike some I have seen sneering that it's Clegg's fault for coming up with "bad proposals", I don't think that is true at all. Every compromise that the Lib Dems made (keeping the Bishops, keeping 20% unelected, making the terms 15 years, not allowing re-election) were done to address specific concerns from one side or another. That those compromises are now being used to claim the bill is a "dog's breakfast" is simply a function of how difficult it is to change the status quo when there is such a diversity of views on what should be kept and reformed.

There are noises off that indicate a set of watered down proposals might, just might get the nod from *some* of the Conservative rebels. Perhaps, if we're lucky we might, just might get a small sliver of elected peers alongside a load of appointees from mass membership organisations. Forgive me if I don't climb up onto my roof to sing hallelujah at this prospect.

I think we are at the point where we should park this bill. I say this in the light of the shocking GDP figures for Q2. -0.7% shows we are definitively back in recession and this is now the worst economic situation since before the Second World War. In that context, a prolonged parliamentary battle to try and salvage some vestige of Lords reform would risk looking like political folly and would really not be worth the fight anyway.

We need to focus very strongly on the economy and growth. Our ministers need to fight internally within the government and externally where possible to ensure that at the very least Plan A becomes Plan A+ if not a politically covert Plan B. I'm not suggesting that we should trade Lords reform off in exchange for this, indeed I am sure that would never fly. But we need to make our priorities crystal clear under the current economic circumstances.

I usually despise the phrase "now is not the right time". For opponents of reform it is never the right time. However I am afraid I have come to the conclusion that right now, for probably the only time in my political memory that argument is correct.

For fellow Lib Dems looking for a legacy of our time in government, if we can spend the last 30 or so months helping to ensure growth returns that will surely reflect very well on us.

As for Lords reform, it will probably have to wait for a future coalition agreement. And next time we need to make sure it is worded very clearly to leave future partners no wriggle room.

At all.


This post was first published on Lib Dem Voice.