“Good evening Mr Haw!” I said cheerily as I wandered past the assorted tents and placards still disfiguring the east side of Parliament Square; but the legendary peace campaigner studiously ignored my outstretched hand. I thought this just a touch rude, but reasoned afterwards that he must have taken me for a member of the ruling classes. An easy mistake to make – I was, after all, most finely tailored from head to toe for the latest in a series of blogger interviews, most kindly organised by the Millennium Elephant, this time with the leader of the Liberal Democrats himself, Nick Clegg! Here’s all I remember of the evening:

Jo Christie-Smith asked Nick about our much-heralded “narrative” and, on a related theme, Helen Duffett questioned Nick regarding our media profile, or rather lack of it. To reinforce the point, Helen produced a pair of “media goggles” with a red lens on one side, and blue on the other – the point being that the media tend to view politics in terms of a straight divide between Labour and Conservative, thus marginalising the Liberal Democrats. Nick acknowledged the problem and assured us that we have people on the case in Cowley Street, but I was heartened to learn that he is not obsessing over the media. Nick says he doesn’t even read the newspapers every day, and tends to think that their influence is on the wane.

Somewhere along the line, Nick and I got into a mild disagreement over David Cameron. I quite like Cameron, seeing the deeply reactionary forces on his backbenches as being more of the problem as far as the Conservatives are concerned. But Nick is not remotely impressed with Cameron, whom he regards as superficial and deeply conservative, notwithstanding some obvious movement towards a place of sanity which has taken place under his watch. I will naturally bow to Nick’s better judgement, but a brief survey of some voting figures from last week serve to highlight the point I was trying to make:

The evening before we saw Nick, David Howarth and Evan Harris were busy seeing off the oppressive, defunct, and frankly embarrassing crime of “blasphemy” in the House of Commons. The division was never in doubt; nevertheless 57 MPs voted in a desperate attempt to retain blasphemy legislation in the 21st century – virtually all of them Conservatives. So while both Cameron and Clegg were among the Ayes that evening, it would appear that at least a quarter of the Conservative parliamentary party are completely mad! In short, there is a rich seam to be mined here, if only Liberal Democrats could be persuaded to openly embrace a more radical secular agenda. But I digress!

Paul Walter wanted to know whether, what with Labour steadily losing confidence by the hour, there might be any scope for applying pressure on electoral reform for Westminster. Nick was adamant that he has no intention of flirting with Labour on this, or indeed any other issue. But Jo wanted to know why we are so bad at fighting PR elections (echoing a point made recently by Jonathan Calder). The sad truth is that proportional representation in Scotland, Wales, or London has not thus far led to a dramatic change in Liberal Democrats fortunes. The reasons may be various, but some aspects of the recent mayoral elections might give us pause for thought:

For example, Helen may want to get away from the red and blue “media goggles,” but how are we to prevent the media from asking the obvious (and entirely legitimate) question as to where one is intending to cast one’s second preference vote? Brian Paddick resisted this up to a point, but was unable to avoid letting out a few hints along the way, before eventually “declaring” for the Left List after the close of poll (the less said about that the better). Read more »

Word reaches LDV from think-tank Demos that Chris Huhne, the Lib Dems’ shadow home secretary, has contributed an essay to a new publication out today, The Politics of Public Behaviour: how governments should respond to the public consequences of private decisions.

Pamphlet editor Duncan O’Leary explains more:

[It examines] the social effects of personal decisions on marriage, parenting, diet, exercise, smoking, flying, pensions savings etc). Nanny state vs ‘Pontius Pilot state’ as John Reid once put it.

Huhne’s basic argument is that community approaches and peer pressure should be the tools to address social policy goals without coercive intrusion into people’s personal lives. The comparisons between the three essays are instructive. Andy Burnham has a piece which argues that the time has come for the progressive Left to stand firm behind a role for government because it stands for the common good – very much in keeping with James Purnell’s speech on Tuesday to the Fabians.

You can download a PDF copy of The Politics of Public Behaviour by clicking here.

Which Lib Dem MPs received the most media mentions between 1st December 2007 and 29th February, 2008? To find out I trawled Lexis-Nexis’s online database of all UK national newspapers (and a huge number of regional ones), feeding in the names of each of our MPs in turn, and seeing how many returns were generated.

To qualify, the MP must have been mentioned either as a Liberal Democrat or Lib Dem. This will disadvantage those MPs who are working their regional media hard, but whose names do not appear under the party’s banners. Sorry, but them’s the rules.

Anyway, here’s the list in descending order of media mentions (with their Sept-Nov 2007 positions in brackets): Read more »

… Herbert Asquith formally became Prime Minister, the last leader of a Liberal government. To mark the occasion, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has put up this webpage to Asquith and the dynasty that came after him.

Congratulations to Lynne Featherstone, who has become, she believes, the first British MP to use the Twitter instant messaging system, just slightly less than one year after I first suggested on my blog, and in the forums here (party members only).

Those of you unable or unwilling to read the forums will be unaware that the idea was initially dismissed out of hand by influential party bosses, before they went on to embrace it wholeheartedly.  Now the entire Innovations Department is happily twittering away.

Barely a month afterwards, the party used Twitter for a highly successful if under-used election day results broadcast system. That has since been relaunched to a similarly successful and similarly under-used short news system.  Follow this link for full instructions on how to sign up to it.

A quick google, and I find a Guardian story about Alan Johnson MP using Twitter for his Labour deputy leadership election campaign. In the US, however, Twitter is much more a part of the scene.  Both Clinton and Obama have feeds - as did pioneer John Edwards until, erm, about four months ago.

Back on this side of the atlantic, you can get twitter updates for Iain Dale - barely three minutes ago he posted the all-important information about heavy snow in Tunbridge Wells.  And the following Lib Dem luminaries use twitter:

• Martin Tod
• James Graham
• Gavin Whenman
• Duncan Hames
• Richard Gadsden
• er… me

My next bright idea for Twitter is an opt-in Conference service for vital conference information like where’s uneaten free food, what’s hot on the fringe, oh, and maybe, vote-by-vote updates from the conference floor.  Watch this space…

The serialisation of Ming Campbell’s memoirs is continuing in the Mail. The latest instalment considers his own 18-month tenure as Lib Dem leader – not, perhaps, the happiest time of his life.

Ming’s prose is as starched as his collars and cuffs. Pre-publication rumours suggested he had been instructed to ‘sex up’ his autobiography – and I do wonder if this nugget made it into the first draft, or was inserted later:

Charles had come under fire soon after his election because of a lack of clear leadership. Indeed, at a clear-the-air meeting in 1999, I had told him that his office was a “f****** shambles” - I remember it because it was most uncharacteristic of me to swear at such a gathering.

The rest of the account is more concerned with the background noise to his own resignation; in particular, Simon Hughes’ frequently off-piste commentary on Ming’s leadership is the subject of some scarcely-veiled criticism. But Simon is the only MP named (at least in this extract) – the ‘grey suits’ who appear to have made the greatest impact on Ming’s decision to stand down are Lib Dem peers, specifically Bob Maclennan, Shirley Williams and Navnit Dholakia. Read more »

Ming Campbell’s autobiography is due out shortly – you can pre-order it from Amazon here, and earn the Lib Dems some commission – and is currently being serialised by the Daily Mail. No surprise that the first instalment should focus on Charles Kennedy’s battle with alcoholism and his forced resignation as leader in January 2006.

Much of the account is familiar – the growing awareness of Charles’s problems within the Westminster village, and the protectiveness of Charles’s inner team. But Ming also describes his first realisation of how Charles’s drinking was beginning to impede his ability to do his job - when they were both due to meet Palastinian leader, Yasser Arafat in October 2001, Ming relates how Charles was late, shaking badly, and able only to ask one question in between dashes to the toilet.

And, in case all of that isn’t sufficient to pique your interest, you can also read about (unfounded) newspaper allegations of Lady Elspeth’s “affair” with David Steel…

Dear friends,

Mr Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat Shadow Foreign Secretary, has bravely and generously agreed to offer us bloggers some of his time for an interview to cover the wide range of Liberal Democrat Foreign Policy!

This is a particularly busy and exciting time for the foreign affairs team, with the European Reform Treaty that is passing through the House of Commons causing a lot of interest, but also the elections in America and Pakistan, the Olympics in China, the situation in Darfur and the ongoing battles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I know that lots of you will be interested, and so, in the interest of opening up these interviews to more people, we should like to invite more of you to join in. Place ARE limited, but we would like to see some new faces. In particular, we should like at least one person who would be willing to write up the interview for Liberal Democrat Voice. So you can have a go even if you don’t have your own blog!

The interview will take place in London at 7pm in the evening of Monday 3rd March, and we hope to squeeze about an hour into Mr Ed’s busy schedule.

Applications in the comments column below, please, so long as you have an e-mail for me to contact you.

Go on, give it a go!

Love from Millennium

(now, read my diary!)

There’s an in-depth interview former Liberal party leader Jeremy Thorpe in today’s Guardian – focusing not on his past, but on the party’s future. Here’s the skinny:

On the Lib Dems helping form a coalition government:

I’d prefer Clegg not to go into coalition. He should keep the party a free agent, keep on opposing the government.”

On David Cameron:

Cameron is a phoney, a Thatcherite who is pretending to be progressive.”

On Gordon Brown:

Dour and unimpressive. Like Callaghan … You have to go back to Attlee to get a really good Labour PM.”

On proportional representation:

In the large rural areas, enormous constituencies, it is better to keep a single MP.” PR should be saved for the cities, he says.

And… on that scandal:

I wanted to clear the air, but I was pretty shattered. I would have gone on leading the Liberal Democrats. I think I could have pushed up our number of seats.”

Quick alert for those wanting to see/hear Lib Dem MPs live on air in the next three days:

• Tonight (Fri), Sarah Teather, the Lib Dems’ new shadow secretary of state for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, will be on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions at 8.00 pm (repeated Saturday, 1.10 pm);
• On Sunday night, David Laws will be on BBC Radio 4’s The Westminster Hour at (some point from) 10.00 pm.
• And on Monday lunch-time, Sarah Teather (again) will be appearing on BBC Radio 5 Live at around 12.30 pm.

You can catch up with all the forthcoming Lib Dem media appearances over at the Flock Together website.

Happy viewing/listening.

In news that will surely delight Lib Dem Voice’s resident militant atheist (and at least one fluffy elephant), our new leader does not count himself amongst the nation’s theists, according a report over at the BBC.

The revelation came as part of a Radio 5 ‘rapid fire’ interview when he was asked whether he believed in God, and he replied no.

He later qualified his remarks, saying he had enormous respect for people with a faith (unlike LDV’s RMA) and that his wife and children were Catholic:

I myself am not an active believer, but the last thing I would do when talking or thinking about religion is approach it with a closed heart or a closed mind.

The latest issue of Lib Dem News featured an editorial column by the party’s Chief Executive, Chris Rennard, responding to comments he’d heard about the party needing to go “Beyond Rennard”. In doing so, Chris is himself kick-starting a debate about how our campaigning should evolve.

There have been a number of thoughtful responses on Lib Dem blogs where such a debate should lead us which are worth looking at:

The Canard of Rennard on James Graham’s Quaequam blog

Rennard’s Challenge on Andy Mayer’s blog

Beyond Rennard - Dangerous talk costs seats on Pete Dunphy’s Party Political PLC

We’re not going to throw the baby out with the bath water on Paul Walter’s Liberal Burblings

Beyond Rennardism: we need to win the battle of ideas, not just the fight for votes on Iain Sharpe’s Eaten by Missionaries blog.

Let me know if there’s any I missed!

That’s the demand of his publishers, Hodder & Stoughton, according to The Observer’s media diary:

Menzies Campbell has followed a path well trodden by political leaders past, settling down to write his life story, which should hit the shops in 2009. But we hear the first draft has already been sent back by publishers Hodder & Stoughton - because it is too boring. Editors were horrified to discover the former Lib Dem leader failed to reflect on the ousting of predecessor Charles Kennedy or the subsequent knifing Sir Ming himself endured. Since the twin defenestrations are the only newsworthy parts of the book, they do seem rather startling omissions, and Ming has been instructed to sex up the document forthwith.