Liberal Landslide

By the narrowest of margins Nick secured victory today and will go on to lead our party for, I hope, a long time to come.

His acceptance speech spoke of the thread of liberalism running through the very fabric of British society and that to pull it out would be to pull that entire fabic apart. Nick is the future of liberalism in this country, and I believe that his is a voice that will appeal to parts of society that we have never reached before.

Our's is not a party divided but a party that recognised two hugley credible candidates of largely equal merit, and broke evenly between the two. Having watched the result in party HQ amongst Cleggites and Huhnistas there was a genuine feeling of bonamie and positivity between everyione present. Its time we put this contest behind us and got stuck into the opposition.

This entire election campaign has seemed significantly more exciting than the last one, not least because the only scandal and intrigue has actually pushed us up in the polls. There is a genuine feeling that the party is on the march and that both candidates have been very able in setting out what it truly means to be a Liberal Democrat.

My choice, from the start, has never been in doubt. Nick Clegg has not just lived up to my expectations as a candidate, he has surpassed them. He represents, in my mind, a truly bright future for our party and one in which I believe there is hope once again for demolishing the two party megalith.

Chris has fought an undeniably valiant campaign, but his negativity, epitomised in his choice to fight in the instinctive fight or flight response to Sopel’s production of his briefing against Clegg, was unedifying and divisive. I also believe that he has been rather disingenuous in trying to break off the anti-trident wing of the party (of which I am an ardent member) by painting a picture of himself as a disarmer when actually he wants to maintain a minimum deterrent with a new land based missile system.

So for me, and many of my counter parts, it has to be Nick and then let him lead us for a good long time to come as I would much rather devote my campaigning efforts to blooding the Tories, the Nats and Labour than arguing the toss with friends and colleagues in my own Party.

It took all of 18 seconds for the SNP to renege on the first of many manifesto commitments in this afternoon’s announcement on the Strategic Spending Review. Graduate debt will go unserviced, quell suprise, and that was just the start. It was stunning, the finance minister got to his feet and had the brass cohones to suggest that the SNP had ditched some of its manifesto commitments, not because of some inherent flaw in their spending calculations, but because they knew that in minority administration they would fail to obtain enough Parliamentary support. I have never heard, until now, of an administration jettisoning its manifesto commitments so early on and without a struggle in parliament except as part of some sort of coalition negotiation. Will the SNP be able to convince the electorate of anything at the next election if it is so prepared to cut and run at the first sign of trouble?

Nicol was excellent, delivering body blow after body blow to the SNP’s ‘sham politics and shifty accounting’. Once again Kenny McKaskill’s Newsnight words came back to haunt him when Nicol recited the transcript of Monday night’s interview in which Kenny admitted police number increases might drop to zero and that he didn’t know exactly how many police officers were on active duty at any one time as training courses and the like made them difficult to count. The wheels are off the wagon and the honeymoon is over.

And it is the Liberal Democrats alone, who offer that last bastion of resistance to these reforms. Nick Clegg has already stated his willingness to resist ID cards up to and including incarceration; whilst Vince Cable, yesterday, delivered a hammer blow to the logic behind extended detention when he pointed out that not a single case has collapsed to date due to the lack of time in which police and security forces currently have to gather evidence.

Even in Scotland, the SNP have nailed their colours to the mast by stating their commitment to expanding DNA retention legislation to ensure that it is retained for those who are arrested but not charged and for those under the age of 16. At present almost 150,000 children have records in the Government’s National DNA database. What kind of a future can someone construct for themselves knowing that misdemeanours in adolescence and childhood may have a bearing on their relative innocence in the eyes of the law for the rest of their life?

On detention without charge, DNA retention and ID cards, New Labour, is seeking to out gun the Tories on right wing agendas by designing the architecture of a very different kind of Britain. A Britain in which the principle of guilty until proven innocence will be turned on its head and every last one of us will end up having to submit our bio metric data, our identities and even our genetic coding for retention and analysis in the dark vaults of Government.

Let's make one thing clear from the start, I utterly oppose the renewal of Trident on the river Clyde and for that matter any where else in the UK, (unlike the SNP who just want it pushed south of the border). It is utterly repellent to every fibre of my moral outlook and, I believe, utterly irrelevant as a tool of 21^st century diplomacy except perhaps as a final tool in the architecture of global disarmament. It is from that position that I, and many of my Lib Dem colleagues approach the decision of who should lead the federal party and in that regard we remain convinced that in this issue as in many others it should be Nick Clegg.

In a race in which the Party is spoilt for choice between two very credible candidates and the media is seeking to find ideological difference between 2 men who come from a very similar perspective, there were always going to be over simplifications of position, but to suggest that Nick is pro trident is utterly misleading. Nick has adopted a position which displays an unequivocal commitment to disarmament not just in the UK but around the world. He wishes to use the means by which we divest ourselves of the trident menace for one purpose only, the reignition of global disarmament in the Non Proliferation Treaty talks of 2010. Chris Huhne however proposes the replacement of trident with a 'minimum nuclear deterrent' which would arguably violate our commitments to the NPT as much as the weapon system's renewal. On this issue, I am in no doubt that Nick offers the more robust commitment to disarmament and many of the Lib Dems with whom I marched in Edinburgh today agree wholeheartedly with that assessment.

The cry of those would subdue us in recent weeks has been: “who cares?” “what are the Lib Dems for” etc. Radio presenters of phone in shows have asked their audiences “Is the departure of Ming Campbell a suitable juncture for the Lib Dems to curl up and die?” Well, now we have hard statistics with which to round on our detractors and show that far from being cast to the periphery, the public of Britain still believe us to be a significant force in British Politics.

According to a recent poll conducted by the Daily Politics, respondents were asked the following:

Please say if you agree or disagree with the following statement: The Liberal Democrats are now irrelevant in British Politics.

Agree 32%

Disagree 57%

Not sure 11%

Source: Populus / Daily Politics
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,011 British adults, conducted on Oct. 17 and Oct. 18, 2007. No margin of error was provided.

As a voluntary sector Lobbyist, I find myself in the position of having to attend each of the party conferences north of the border. As the Scottish Political Village is quite small this does not actually entail the colossal exercise in loin girding and talisman toting that the external observer might expect. This weekend I was at the mercy of the nationalists and to be fair they were all pretty cordial with me, given my well known party affiliation. Needless to say, tails were up all round and much patting on the back was had by the legions of bekilted Nat activists. It goes without saying that following protracted exposure to wall to wall nationalism, my evenings were spent in the darkened corner of a bar surrounded by the warm blanket of unionism made up of a phalanx of lobbyists from various anti- independence political persuasions.

The SNP conference was, as we have come to expect, characterised by lavish and populist spending commitments, (much to the chagrin of the Presiding Officer who will now be well within his rights to deny them the platform to make the same announcements in the chamber.) including the abolition of prescription charges.

Now I have spoken with a number of non partisan friends and colleagues who have expressed dismay at this.  They pointed out that they didn’t in fact mind paying the £6 for a prescription but were more concerned about having to wait 6 months for an operation. Their sentiment is basically that which is shared by many: that if there is available money in the health service budget then let’s tackle the issues that really matter, such as free prescriptions for the poor the old or those with chronic conditions such as CF, or tackle our shortage of dentists, but lets not give free prescriptions to those who don’t really need them. Given that the press is full of reports of the hard winter we can expect in terms of expenditure following the comprehensive spending review, it’s time for prudence to begin and cheap (or rather expensive) populism to end.

So the race has begun and it appears increasingly likely that the field will distil down to just 2 contenders. And for what it is worth, I’m just going to nail my colours to the mast right here and say that I am for Clegg. Why? Whilst Chris is a truly worthy candidate, I believe that Nick offers both the party and the nation a new direction, energy and dynamism that will reinvigorate our platform and make our policies sing.

Many members have still to make up their minds and will I hope engage in one of the many hustings events that are scheduled to take place around the country. If you get the chance, just go and meet Nick, talk to him, listen to what he’s got to say and find your own views listened to keenly by him. He has that crucial ability to connect with people at their level which will, I believe, give him the opportunity to win back voters from across the demographic spectrum.

We should use this campaign as a means of showcasing everything that is good about our party, lord knows the press have been quite successful in ignoring that in recent months. This campaign seems set to be far different from the last and should remind all sections of the voting British population as to why the world needs Liberals.

It goes without saying that I have been absent for quite some time.

Needless to say, the electoral calculus didn't quite go my way on the night/morning of May 3rd/4th, but I'm quite happy to remain a political footnote, for the time being...

Of the intevening months, much has happened, we now find ourselves with a new Prime Minister without a mandate, a mildly resurgent Tory party coasting to poll success on the back of 2 dimensional policy announcements and a Lib Dem leadership campaign which promises to revive the party. Intersting times indeed, and what better time to restart Liberal Landslide and open the cross party debate over the daily movement of the Scottish Political Village and that which lies beyond...