The government has considered the introduction of regional pay in light of concerns that public sector pay premiums across the UK are ‘crowding-out’ the private sector. However statistics show that the private sector is not struggling to recruit staff, as vacancies in the public sector go unfilled for longer and a survey of business leaders shows that the majority have not struggled to compete with public sector wages.

The timing of this paper is particularly appropriate in light of the decision of 19 NHS trusts in the South West to sign a cartel agreement effectively introducing regionalised pay into the region. Unions have expressed concern that these actions by ‘rogue’ NHS employers will undermine national negotiations covering pay and conditions under the Agenda for Change agreement and hit the morale of NHS staff

Regional pay has been opposed in the House of Commons by several Conservative MPs from non-metropolitan areas and Welsh Liberal Democrats have tabled a conference motion on the issue for discussion in September.

The biggest concern with the introduction of regional pay is that low wage areas outside of London and the South East will be worst hit, as cuts to public sector pay create knock-on effects for private sector retail and service industries. There is also the risk that the quality of public sector services will decline as staff migrate to areas of higher pay.

Nick Clegg has declined to support any proposals that will exacerbate the north-south divide and it is hoped that this resolve will hold strong in the coming months. So far signs are encouraging.

* John Pugh is the MP for Southport and is Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Committee for Health and Social Care

The party will be told that there is no practical alternative to the Lansley Bill. That could be true. I have no doubt that the Bill has been substantially changed and improved as a result of the listening exercise and amendment in the Lords.

It is, however, still a massive set of changes to the NHS and a continuation of the direction set for the NHS by Tony Blair. Fears about the practicality of its implementation, the over centralisation of power and the pro-market philosophy that underpinned the original Bill have seriously upset many, if not most of the people responsible for running the NHS and the public. The unforeseen consequences of implementation were what forced Norman Lamb to speak out.

Few get into the fine detail of the Bill, few will - but many are asking whither the NHS?

We are thus as a party on the horns of a dreadful dilemma.

There are two sharply contrasting schools of thought- one view is that we have a problematic Bill and should drop it; the other view is that we have a problematic Bill and we are stuck with it.

It seems to me that we are at our best as a party when we deal in solutions, not grumbles, and it seems sensible for us to answer the question “Whither the NHS?”  other than by suggesting we limit ourselves to cobbling together legislative compromises. Whatever happens at Gateshead, and however people vote, the general direction we want to take the NHS must be made clear.

My paper A  Way Through – NHS Reform without strife and upheaval has been already partly circulated and received some positive reaction from both informed medical opinion and party members. It factors in where we could be post -Bill or without-Bill. I would be the last to claim that it is perfect, but I would be the first to acknowledge that in life there are always alternatives.

* John Pugh is the MP for Southport and is Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Committee for Health and Social Care

As the Liberal Democrat councillors took the bullet for the coalition on local election day and Conservatives emerged relatively unscathed, it must be asked whether the extent of our defeats was avoidable. To put it another way could we have played the coalition game better – both in terms of presentation and in terms of policy?

The answer is unequivocally yes and for that reason MPs owe an apology to our council colleagues. Setting aside the policy disaster that was tuition fees and the lack of trust that emanated from that, we have been lured into the tribal politics that characterises Westminster and so suits Labour and Conservative alike.

It can seem to those who don’t follow politics closely that we have simply decamped and joined the Tory tribe. We are playing our political hand by the old rules with all the pointless, cross chamber point scoring and silly mantras that characterise the political tribalism we ordinarily reject. “Tory good; Labour bad or vice versa”

In consequence to many voters coalition politics has not looked like the ‘new politics’ simply a realignment of the tribes. That perception together with the lack of trust engendered through the tuition fees debate has been a lethal cocktail.

The thesis often advocated by my friend and colleague Jeremy Browne that we have simply lost the protest vote seems wholly inadequate to explain our current plight. After all, councillors in years gone by, up and down the country, have been able to solicit effectively support for tough difficult, local decisions without the sort of collateral damage suffered on May 5th. Some have had more experience of coalitions than MPs.

The stated consoling hope that a new category of voters who wouldn’t previously have considered us are just waiting to see more of the same before putting their X down for the Lib Dems seems born of desperation. “The Considerers” seem as elusive as the Borrowers in Mary Norton’s famous children’s story – very tiny and almost invisible.

The truth is that, collectively, the parliamentary party have made mistakes – some perhaps more than others – and for the sake of those whose dedicated campaigning came unstuck the first Thursday in May – we should say so.

John Pugh is MP for Southport

The remarks of Vince Cable and other Lib Dem ministers (whether public or private), the rumblings of back-benchers, the cracks in cabinet unity – they all come with the territory.

There are those in the Whips’ offices of all parties who dream of colleagues meandering contentedly like a flock of docile sheep through the same voting lobby on every occasion.

There are those in the press offices of all parties who want nothing more than the bleating of on-message soundbites on every possible occasion. However, that’s not real-time politics. That’s certainly not Coalition politics!

There are arguments between politicians that should ideally take place in private, and arguments that must be aired in public. It is hard for cabinet ministers to do the former, and easy for backbenchers to do the latter. That, too, is normal.

Coalitions work off the back of personal chemistry, shared objectives and political necessity. Unity of purpose helps, but cannot always be guaranteed. However, what must be there, whatever the inherent tensions and indeed because of them, is competent government based on detailed planning and clear evidence. No rabbits, few hats, no panic.

Most, if not all, of the hiccoughs in the Coalition’s progress so far have been generated by occasional rushed, hard-to-explain actions rebounding to no party’s credit. The Schools Sports Partnerships is the latest and most universally acknowledged instance. True, the current financial plight of the country requires determined quick action, but there are other fears and motives around.

It has been seriously argued by some that the Coalition Government’s programme, based itself on a hastily established Coalition Agreement, must be very quickly put into action through legislation — even at the cost of leaving rough edges to be revisited at a later date. “Use political capital while you still have it,” they say.

One could point out, though, that hastily implementing a hastily-constructed Coalition Agreement, leaving a trail of issues to be resolved, is probably not a great way of gaining a reputation for competent government. Nor for that matter is it a great way of ensuring the desired harmony between coalition partners

Countries should always fear government by ‘old men in a hurry’. We, for obvious reasons, need not — but perhaps we should be on our guard against anyone airily offering us ‘revolution’, ‘transformation’ ,’liberation’ or the weary old cliche of ‘step change’. Anyone more interested in the headlines than the stubborn, practical realities of everyday life should go and work for a newspaper.

It may be a very ‘conservative’ attitude, but I do think there is an appetite now for humble, boring, serious, prosaic and — above all — efficient government. As we enter a new year (in the words and accent of Gary, Terry and Barry), “Calm Down, Calm Down!”

* John Pugh is Lib Dem MP for Southport.

I think this is a flawed analysis. Liberal Democratic attitudes follow not from any sectional interest but a belief in democratic accountability. Opposition to many alleged reforms in public services hinge on a conviction that they are a poor substitute for it.

To understand what’s going on I have learned from Mafia films you must ‘follow the money.’

We all agree that public services spend a lot of our money to achieve publicly (democratically) agreed goals. Many of us Liberal Democrats agree that how much of that money is spent is better and more efficiently decided by democratic decisions made locally.

Inevitably that means there must be some body which represents local opinion. Call it a ‘council’. A sensible thing would be to have those who spend our money accountable to this body and thus indirectly to us. It is of course not necessary for such a body to run or micro-manage all local public services.

However, the general drift of public service reform advocated by those on the right of politics is to replace this very simple form of accountability with other kinds of pseudo-accountability. Foundation hospitals are ‘accountable’ to their members, academies may be ‘accountable’ to parents, local services to users, etc. With these new forms of ‘accountability’, often comes a reduction in any power publicly accountable bodies have over the ‘reformed’ entities.

Two crucial things are worth noticing about this ersatz accountability:

1. The use of public funds at best is only accountable to the people who enlist at the school, join the hospital, use the service—but it is not just their money that is being used!
2. The ‘accountability’ is rarely more than the accountability of a retailer to its customers — it never stretches to a ‘power of command’ to do something differently, or to stop doing something.

Compare this with the situation where we can unelect or elect people who spend our money wisely or unwisely.

In effect the general drift of recent public sector ‘reform’ has been to increase the number of unaccountable people and institutions spending our money, a substitution of ersatz for genuine democratic accountability. In effect those few with increased leverage on such bodies may be somewhat ‘empowered’. If it was only their money that was being spent that would be fine, but it does not follow from that the democratic will of people is not being edged out.

One accepts that underlying this debate there is another debate as to whether local democracy in practice works.

One accepts as sociological fact that whether you buy into ‘real accountability’ or ‘ersatz accountability’ might depend on whatever cultural preconceptions you have about council life. The more upwardly mobile, metropolitan, male and unmunicipal you are, the more you feel you can do without the communal voice.

However, I do not see the flaw in the above analysis which can be tested daily.

In any argument over public service the question who accounts to whom for spending our money is sure to put the cat amongst the pigeons, is often glossed over with cliché—but if answered with precision tells you much.

* John Pugh is Lib Dem MP for Southport.

This might be thought a given as Liberals are, from the point of view of the media, supposed to have a benign, Panglossian view of human nature which unkind souls might call unrealistic or wet.

Wrong on both counts!

I have long thought the only good moral reason for punishing someone is that they deserve it and that the state is entitled to give offenders the punishment they deserve. That means many minor offenders could not grumble if they found themselves banged up in gaol. That makes me a supporter of what has been dubbed the retribution theory of punishment.

However every state, every school, every parent – every potential punisher, in other words, – has to decide how much due punishment to dole out. They do that in the light of other wider objectives.

Foremost amongst those is the need to keep crime down, to deter offenders. Here the evidence is unequivocal. Short sentences are not only costly but singularly ineffective in preventing re-offending compared with some of the alternative means of punishment.

This is what research by the National Audit Office shows, what the Public Accounts Committee and its right wing chairman, Edward Leigh recently concluded and what every Home Secretary since Winston Churchill has known.

Ken Clarke ought to be supported not because of any Liberal leanings but because he has the courage to act on the evidence and, at 70, to worry more about what might be the real results of policy than
headlines.

There will be a need to keep short sentences for unrepentant recidivists and a need to assess how a lesser incarceration rate impacts on potential criminals, to ensure the efficacy of community punishments but there can be no case for avoiding evidence led policy. Oh that others would follow suit!

To act on prejudice alone would be criminal.

Previous soundings on LibDemVoice.org have produced a thoughtful and largely critical postbag with the results passed on to the party’s Health Minister, Paul Burstow.

Paul, and indeed Nick Clegg, believe there is plenty in the White Paper Liberal Democrats should warmly support — such as the increased commissioning role for GPs, and the increased role of local authorities in public health. Others point out that Coalition agreements to have directly elected health boards and no major restructuring of the NHS have been dropped.

The response to the Health Paper has been very mixed nationally with right-wing think tanks (Civitas, Reform), charities and professional groups all voicing reservations. The uncertainty over the ‘cost’ of reforms means that the stakes are high.

No-one in either coalition party wants to go through the pain of the spending round and deficit reduction, and then have to firefight problems of a less-than-successful NHS reform before the next General Election.

That’s why we must work to get it right if we can. Key issues are: (1) how can GP commissioners be properly made democratically accountable to the public, and (2) how can their role in funding produce a sensibly organised, efficient service that meets the needs of the communities they serve?

To go forward we need to hear proper, clear answers to such questions.

Can I encourage delegates to pitch into this debate? There will be a consultative session on health on Saturday morning — please make your voice heard. Next conference could be too late.

Unable to go? Send your views to pughj@parliament.uk

* John Pugh is Lib Dem Parliamentary Party Co-Chair for Health, and MP for Southport.

There is myth that those who want to shrink the state are more concerned than others about how the state raises money.

Deficit deniers in one corner – state shrinkers in the other.

But Liberal Democrats can act to reduce the deficit and be positive about the role of the democratic state.

What prompts any given government to run a deficit is usually circumstantial, prompted and encouraged by economists reading the runes. Reaganomics was based both on huge deficits and reducing the role of the state.

As someone who regards talk of ‘rolling back the state’ as largely vacuous I don’t want to see us crippled by debt, in hock to the bond markets or, like Greece, dancing to the tune of creditors.

Social Liberals believe a state responsive to the democratic will to be an enormously powerful mechanism for increasing opportunity and freedom. They ought to be troubled when it turns into a flaccid and unwieldy vehicle spooked by the murmurings of self appointed credit agencies and powerless when confronted by the denizens of international finance.

Like others on the centre-left I want the coalition government to put the nation’s finances in good shape and do so in a pragmatic and principled way – in the interests of an effective state. As long as that is what happens there need be no centre left/centre right split.

The trouble starts when those on the right start to regard the democratic state itself as some sort of alien monster that has sprung into existence on its own, independently of its citizens. Then ‘rolling back the state’ is identified as freeing and empowering citizens – as though we can always achieve the same individually as we can collectively.

It is precisely because of poor accountability – a distorted voting system, limited devolution and huge swathes of public services run by quangos – that people disassociate their aspirations from those of their state.

That is no reason for Liberals to endorse a general despair about the democratic state itself.

The degree of that despair, though, is what is dividing Liberal Democrats and leads some to accept public service reforms that offer superficial choice as a fair exchange for diminshed public accountability.

Others believe that we give up the battle for true accountability at our peril.

I’m tasked as Co-Chair for the Backbench Health Committee to ensure that distinctive Lib Dem policy on health goes into the Coalition Government equation.

So I have decided to seek party members’ views on the much-reported Health White Paper – especially from those who have a bit of hands on experience of the NHS.

Please post here or alterantively e-mail me at pughj@parliament.uk

The issues are not insignificant, with the perennial issues of cost, efficiency and accountability being thrown into the melting pot by another proposed NHS restructuring. All feedback gratefully received.

With most spending/commissioning power of the NHS scheduled to be handed to consortia of GPs, Primary Care Trusts face oblivion. It would be good to know how ordinary party members feel – specifically:

• Is the NHS ready for another structural upheaval/reform?
• How will GPs cope with their new role?
• And are we going to get a local NHS which is more accountable to the citizen and tax payer?
• Will the NHS work better for the patient without PCTs and Regional Health Authorities?
• Can we make progress without these changes ?

Given that, it is perhaps surprising that Liberal Democrats seem to fear, almost as a knee-jerk reaction, any call for a review of Human Rights legislation. After all Schedule 1 of the Human Rights Act qualifies nearly every right it declares and anyone who has surveyed the field knows how difficult it is when one finds oneself in a complex situation where different and apparently conflicting rights are in play.

One can be very fundamentalist about it and claim that the legislation as framed is the full, final and wholly transparent revelation of the truth about human rights.

A more rational view (let’s exclude Daily Mail columnists here) is that looking at the operation of legislation is at least as interesting as its formulation, and should cause little alarm.

I happen to believe there is a coherent intellectual basis for human rights. However, avoiding a debate and assuming these matters are all self-evident and simple (as though people’s rights and their exercise is ever as evident as the nose on their face) is handing ammunition to those who implausibly suggest that all talk of human rights is a covert way of promoting some leftist ideology.

* John Pugh is Lib Dem MP for Southport.

Wounded – because I could be thought a techno-geek. I build my own PCs, maintain and set up my office networks, buy books on Linux, and hold endless, sad conversations about interoperability. I am not a technophobe.

I just notice that (1) sometimes people pay more attention to the virtual world in their hand than the real world around them; (2) sometimes it’s rude to do so (say, when talking to real people); and (3) sometimes its obsessive and pointless behaviour.

The Tweetminster site promises to link Westminster to the real world, and I do want MPs to have real friends, real debates and real conversations. But that is not the same thing as sending random messages to strangers in the virtual world. I question the value and indeed the intrinsic interest of a public running commentary on one’s life – partly because I want people and politicians to have more time for an inner (ie, non-public) life: reflection, thought, listening, reading, etc .

You don’t always get more interesting by talking all the time and there is no reason why tweeting constantly should be any different. I worry about people who can’t anymore just go to the gym, cafe or event without having to tell thousands they’re doing it . Just do it, I say !

For a politician to oppose tweeting, I am told by Labour’s Twitter czar, is like not looking ‘the public’ in the eye – but it is the addicted tweeter eyes, glued to their devices, who are (I observe) least likely to look the people around them in the face.

Tweeting may have a genuine place in show-business, where adoring fans hang on one’s every word – and maybe politics really is after all showbiz for ugly people – but does it get taken more seriously if encoded in instanteous messages. Had Churchill tweeted at Yalta “Just popping into see Joe Stalin – my what a huge sofa!” – would the event have become more relevant.

Ultimately I suspect that lightning-fast, perpetual communication does not much advance or deepen thought; rather, it encourages ill-thought out re-circulation of stock opinion and borrowed expressions.

Soren Kierkegaard, as garrulous and self-absorbed philosopher as you could find, said of the mass media – “the vast mass of the people have no opinions on many topics but, thanks to the press, here they come!” Tweeting – fun though it may be – is instant, undeveloped observation which makes the circulation of opinion easy without noticeably enhancing its critique.

* John Pugh is Liberal Democrat MP for Southport.

If truth be told the Liberal and Liberal Democrat party has always in its highest echelons consisted of two tribes: Asquithians and Provincials. The creative and social tension that existed when Lloyd George and Asquith vied for power has never altogether disappeared.

* Asquithians are well connected (city, army, bar, media), internationalist and economically liberal and at times libertarian;
* Provincials have strong community roots, favour social liberalism,regional autonomy and at times a degree of moral conservatism.

Jeremy Thorpe was the very archetype of the former. Cyril Smith the latter.

However there is little doubt that the tribes recognise each other. Most Asquithians know and take uncanny cognizance of the background – schooling, pedigree of other Asquithians. Provincials on the other hand are more interested in the humdrum, political machinery that underpins their fellows.

The party is normally led by someone of the Asquithian tradition – Thorpe, Ashdown, Clegg et al, or those in awe of it (Campbell). Analysis of the educational backgrounds of recent Lib Dem shadow cabinets would repay attention from students of social diversity.

In normal times there is a creative tension between the two tribes around such issues as the role of markets and the function of the state. It would not be unfair to say that Asquithians in recent times have hoped to wean the party away from what they saw as an unhealthy addiction to statist solutions.

However we are not in normal times.

Free markets in capital inadequately restrained by the state have unleashed havoc in every area of the country and in every aspect of economic life. State ownership and regulation is touted as a solution and not an evil. The state, far from being opposed to liberty, is seen as the only means to protect ourselves from the blind, unfeeling tyranny of the market. The Provincials find themselves on the same page as the Asquithians.

This is potentially a golden opportunity for the party to act with one soul, and carve out a vision for the country, both inspiring and realistic, where the state becomes the embodiment and preserver of freedom – not the restraint upon it. We are not quite there yet but we have a leader in Nick Clegg who has the charm and the intellect needed to seize the moment.

* John Pugh is Liberal Democrat MP for Southport.

Why Liberals Should Back Fair Trade

There is no such thing as free trade. All trade is conditioned and controlled by regulation, convention, norm and even tradition. It is a process of social exchange.

Historically, Liberals have seen little benefit in insisting that people buy goods only from a given nation or buy at a price fixed for some socially defined purpose. They argued that the individual would lose out thereby getting goods that were inferior in quality and quantity Suppliers who wanted the terms of trade tilted in their favour were in all probability less capable suppliers and there was no real merit in, or indeed prospect of, keeping these suppliers in business.

This last and disputable claim is where free trade and fair trade part company. There is merit in allowing a less capable supplier – particularly in a developing country – to thrive. A fledgling African utility company is no match for a transnational, utility company with evolved technologies for handling water supply or electricity generation. It can be bought out or out-traded on a unit cost basis. However, the net impact of that will be that there will be no fledgling African utility industry that can grow up to compete toe-to-toe with the multi-national conglomerates – and why is that a good thing? It makes power and water supply dependent on multi-national conglomerates and security of supply less certain.

Similar cases can be made for maintaining agricultural diversity and preventing dangerous, widescale monoculture by international companies. Sri Lanka did not become a more sustainable land by being given over by colonial regimes almost entirely to the harvesting of tea and its erratic world price.

Now, of course, if for good or bad reasons nations insist on cocooning every enterprise their nation engages in there is a serious downside. Goods may be poor and time will be wasted – especially if other nations produce the same or superior tradeable goods with far less trouble. Extrapolating from this we can see that nations that are hopelessly given to protectionism may well beggar themselves before they beggar their neighbour.

However free trade as the path to economic prosperity has never been more than a rule of thumb. It is not an iron law even if it can be made into a dogma.

Consider the hypothetical case of a nation trading with a country where much of the population is kept in servitude, or even slavery, thereby making its labour costs unusually competitive. Free trade will generate strong export growth, loss of domestic jobs elsewhere, cheap goods, etc. Such a social outcome is not obviously a good thing but clearly in line with free trade principles – just as suggesting we buy from a country where labour practices are better conflicts with them.

Free trade dogmatists will respond by pointing out that the slave country will accumulate surpluses that will be spent elsewhere, that the importing countries will specialise in doing what slaves do not do well, etc – and all in the great scheme of things will work out for the best. In the long term enslaving your population may turn out not to pay.

However not only are we all, as Keynes said, in the long term dead, but arguing like this is turning ‘free trade’ in to an irrefutable dogma not a sound empirical generalisation. The unconvinced can only walk away from such a dangerous dogma.

A case can be made for some kinds of free trade generating positive outcomes and some forms of protectionism worsening life for many but that does not excuse Liberals from examining whether in particular cases that actually happens. That is why we can and morally must ask whether free trade is fair trade.

The deification of market forces, the worship of mammon, the free and unregulated movement of labour, capital and trade across the globe prompted only by commercial instinct has not only failed to deliver the universal blessings promised but stands revealed in current times as a special kind of stupidity and abnegation of thought.

* John Pugh is Liberal Democrat MP for Southport.

My pre-dilection is to fill the craft with London think tanks (with a few honourable reprieves). Why?

Because they are collectively responsible for the sheer absence of radical thinking in British politics, the explanation of why party manifestos, rhetoric and vocabulary sound increasingly and depressingly the same. Scarcely a week goes by without some or other party leader sounding off in their midst with negligible political effect. Collectively they are responsible for a dearth of genuinely new ideas.

The explanation is relatively simple. Karl Marx claimed “Social being determines consciousness,” and if we examine the denizens of ‘think-tank world’ we will find people of astonishingly similar backgrounds, experiences and education who unsurprisingly come up with astonishingly similar views of the world and its problems.

There is ample scope for some ‘Sociology of Knowledge’ here. Ought we not to be surprised if prominent members of Centre Forum cosy up to Liberal Democrat leaders one day and Labour Prime Ministers the next?

Ought it not to concern us that party leaders’ speeches all contain the tellingly limp line, “Yes, I know our political opponents also say X (fill in blank), but they don’t mean it quite like we do”? Ought we not to start building that spaceship?

I am therefore emboldened to distil out of it the essence of Cleggism with the hope that if I am wrong I will be corrected and so further enlightened.

As I understand Nick’s thinking on the matter of public services, the state remains the funder and regulator of services but not the exclusive provider i.e.  it can give money to individuals to secure services or non-state organisations to deliver them.

This is self-evidently what nearly every state on this planet does already – though to a greater or lesser degree.

What Nick also says is that public services should be delivered equitably to each citizen with the clear implication that it must do more for those communities or individuals less capable of taking advantage of services available (hence the pupil premium etc).

Again there is widespread but not quite uiversal acceptance of this across the political spectrum.

Rhetoric aside the USP of Cleggism appears to be the insistence that central government is not particularly good at delivering these public service objectives and elected governments (aka the state) should make fewer decisions about how they are met.

More decisions about how services are delivered should be made by communities,locally elected bodies and the recipients of services (aka citizens).

This is what people seem to mean mean by the buzz word ‘empowerment’.

Cleggism therefore functions like a political version of Occam’s razor.

Why let national and/or local politicians decide how to deliver a service if that can perfectly well be decided at a local or individual or generally lower level ?

Cleggism retains the traditional belief that what services are funded and the level at which they are funded and quality control should be a matter of collective agreement either at national or local government level.

All of which looks like very much like classic Liberalism.

However, Liberals have claimed equally vigorously that making executive decisions at national, European and even international level is not actually ‘disempowerment’ but pooling powers to great effect and therefore under Cleggism it cannot be argued that it is always smart  to pass decision-making powers down the line.

Doesn’t it really depend on whether passing power down or up or whatever frustrates or fulfills the general will of society expressed through the democratic process – and depressingly interpreted by political parties in increasingly similar ways ?

When in the game of ‘pass the power’ the music stops we still need to make clear how we want a truly liberal society to differ from what other parties propose and what we have now.

John Pugh is Lib Dem MP for Southport.  He is the Lib Dem Shadow Treasury Spokesperson.

I can also claim to have opposed both of them over the anodyne and partly mistaken views of the Huhne Commission – remember when PFI was thought to be a good idea?

In backing Nick I have had my credentials as a definitely left-of-centre Liberal questioned by a few parliamentary and non-parliamentary colleagues – along the lines of, “Dont you realise he is a Trojan horse for Orange Book/Centre Forum takeover.” And it is that conspiracy theorist paranoia that has fuelled the ‘Calamity Clegg’ piece.

I console myself not only with the recognition that the party, not the party leader, decides policy, but also in the knowledge that Nick as a good Liberal will stand an argument. The balance of argument is tipping very decisively against the further marketisation of public services, and it is the very strength of those arguments which will over-power those very few hell-bent on making the party a Tory clone.

There is a battle of ideas ahead, but it is only those on both sides unsure of their argument and wedded to conspiracy who need fear a rational, intelligent, receptive leader. Never fear Trojan horses bearing the right gifts.

* John Pugh is Lib Dem MP for Southport.

However this week it has excelled itself. I can cope with the consistently unfunny cartoons, tired rhetoric, pictures of people holding up placards and/or recanting their membership of other parties. Embarassing predictions of an election cancelled last Saturday only serve to tell us about ludicrously early print dates.

Perhaps the cartoon of Cameron lamenting his poll ratings is meant to be deeply ironic and there is a good article by Duncan Brack about John Stuart Mill’s over-inflated significance.

But am I the only one who finds the paper tribal, patronising, horribly on message in an unliberal way and above all – quite dull?

In current circumstance the party needs to do some serious soul searching and balanced stock taking and reflect the sceptical, mature rationalism that is so much part of Liberalism. I am not sure where Liberal Democrat News fits into that.

Closeted with the press pack for three weeks over the conference season few politicians dared express anything other than a macho enthusiasm for a fight – often expressed in pathetic schoolboy language – ‘wimp’, ‘bottle’ etc. – nothwithstanding the constitutional oddity and administrative problems involved in holding an autumn poll.

With characteristic genius the media bounced from one political source to another setting the agenda.

There is a serious and crucial debate to be had as to how political journalism can disable or improve political life, but Brown, by being drawn into the game, indifferent to the chaos and havoc he caused, has forfeited his right to appear as a “statesman”, and worse still – he has reinforced the press cynic who believes the grubby pursuit of power is always far more important to politicians than actually getting anything done.

Democratic politics takes another hit.

* John Pugh is Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Southport.