At the Spring conference just gone in Brighton, I nearly ended up being a speaker on an all-male panel – and one taking place on International Women’s Day no less. The subject – technology and politics – is one where there are a good few female experts in the party, and it was only Olly Grender’s last minute addition which saved my blushes from Mark Thompson’s quite reasonable intention to turn up and put us all on the spot about what was an all-male panel.

That was, however, just a lucky break which does not always occur by any means – and one which reminded me of an idea that had stuck itself somewhere in the back of my mind when I found myself a few months earlier on an all-male panel at a think tank event.

In technology and other sectors which similarly are trying to grapple with male dominance at their events, there is often a movement to get men to pledge not to agree to participate in a conference panel if it is going to be all male.

My fault for not doing anything about the idea when it first occurred to me. Credit to Mark Thompson for nearly putting a panel on the spot on the issue – and that’s why over the weekend I stuck my neck out on Twitter to make sure that this time the idea doesn’t just slip away into a pending pile of good ideas again.

The idea is to change the balance on what is easy for a panel organiser to do. Often the easy option is to go for the ‘obvious’ names, which helps perpetuate the male dominance (out of kilter with a majority female electorate and a close to 50/50 party membership balance). However, once organisers know that people will say no if they’re lining up a list of just men, then the easy option is to go for a balanced option.

This is no miracle cure. There are many other issues that need addressing too, and many issues of equality that are not about gender.

But it is a simple step that can help – help set a different tone at conference, help set a different example to people in the party as to who is welcome to participate and help highlight to those looking for Lib Dem names to participate on occasions outside party conference that there are plenty of women they could ask too. Indeed the organisers are very likely not choosing the best people if they just choose men!

All it needs is a critical mass of male panel participants (or possible future ones) to pledge not to appear on future all-male panels at Liberal Democrat federal conferences.

Who knows, if it works, we could try spreading this more widely.

So, who’s in?

If you are, drop Mark and myself an email at mark.pack@gmail.com – and if you think you can spare a little time to help (e.g. to approach our male MPs) then please do say so too.

Thanks!

* Mark Pack has written 101 Ways To Win An Election and produces a monthly newsletter about the Liberal Democrats.

As one MP put it, the year has been “about the rise of the left”. Confidence in the party outside Westminster has grown even as polling numbers remained minimal. Liberal Democrats seem to have discovered that even in government the world does not end if you disagree. And this has given rise to a new breed of rebel, personified in Tim Fallon, Lib Dem President and the leading establishment rebel (up 31 places to number three).

Amongst the new entrants are Julian Astle, in at number 26 following his appointment as Deputy Head of the No.10 Policy Unit (to cover Polly Mackenzie’s maternity leave) and Olly Grender, in at number 28 following her appointment as Head of Press for the Deputy Prime Minister (to cover Lena Pietsch’s maternity leave).

So far only 26-50 are listed on the Telegraph website, which you can read here. 1-25 will appear on Monday night.

(UPDATE: 1-25 here.)

And, ahem, I’m up 1 to number 39, which of course in no way influences my view of the rankings. 39 is, the internet tells me, a cursed number according to Afghani superstition.

Click on the following links to see last year’s Shortlist and the Winners.

This year’s awards are as follows:

To be eligible for ‘Best blog from a Liberal Democrat holding public office’, a blog should be written by a councillor, elected mayor, assembly member, or parliamentarian.

The ‘Best use of blogging / social networking / e-campaigning award’ recognises the expanding role of both blogging and the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in politics. It’s a deliberately open category: you might want to nominate a good campaigning YouTube video, a particularly interesting Twitter feed or an effective campaigning website. Include links for the judges to see.

The Best non-Liberal Democrat politics blog winner will be chosen by you, dear reader (should you choose to take part). Once the judges have chosen their shortlist, these blogs will be put up for public vote here on Lib Dem Voice.

Here’s this year’s judging panel, (who aren’t eligible to win, by the way, so please avoid nominating them):

• Helen Duffett (that’s me) Co-Editor (Associate) Lib Dem Voice and also my own blog
• Richard Flowers, winner of Lib Dem Blog of the Year 2010, for The Very Fluffy Diary of Millennium Dome, Elephant.
• David Allen Green, Legal correspondent, New Statesman, and blogger at Jack of Kent.
• Olly Grender, who blogs at the New Statesman.
• Katie Razzall, reporter at Channel 4 News.
• Stephen Tall Co-Editor, Lib Dem Voice.
• Martin Tod from Liberal Democrats Online, who blogs at www.martintod.org.uk

Liberal Democrat Voice and any official blogs run by the party aren’t eligible either.

You’ve got until 2nd September to nominate up to 3 favourites per category, but the sooner the better. Please don’t feel the need to round up hundreds of people to nominate your blog as the number of nominations aren’t taken into account.

Send in your nominations by email to helen@libdemvoice.org and remember to state which award category you’re nominating for, in each case.

Photo by Alex Folkes/Fishnik Photography.

Today it is Andrew Reeves, who blogs at http://andrewrunning.blogspot.com.

1. What’s your formative political memory?
In 1984 Ken Clarke gave me an award at a thank you party for delivering leaflets for him. In front of the 200+ people there he also asked me if I wanted to join the party – and in front of them all I said no! I was pleased he’d won but said that the more I had got to know the party I realised why I couldn’t. He was somewhat embarrassed!

2. When did you start blogging?
Tuesday 15 May 2007.

3. Why did you start blogging?
I worked for Lynne Featherstone from just after the 2005 general election until the end of 2006, before becoming one of the two London Campaigns Officers. I was amazed Lynne found time to write her own blog posts so this was my initial inspiration. I also signed up to run the Great North Run in 2007 and so wanted to use it for a training diary.

4. What five words would you use to describe your blog?
I cheated here, I asked some friends for their five words – here is a selection: friendly, personal, prolific, timely, political, caring, liberal, sharp, punchy, researched, readable, passionate and straight-talking.

5. What five words would you use to describe your political views?
I’m a social liberal democrat.

6. Which post have you most liked writing in the last year (and why)?
I enjoyed writing this, not because I was suspended from Twitter, because to be honest that was a nightmare, but thanks to the support shown by the online community, inside and outside the Liberal Democrats:
Andrew Reeves is still suspended on Twitter – but the support is awesome

7. Which post have you most liked reading in the last year (and why)?
I love reading Caron’s writing, because unlike my shoot from the hip and rant style, Caron is more methodical and this shows in her writing. In this post Caron highlights the hypocricy of the Labour party while still maintaining decorum – perfect:
Labour didn’t love NHS Direct

8. What’s your favourite YouTube clip?
I don’t particularly bother with YouTube, but this was my favourite ever:

9. Which bloggers, writers or thinkers inspire you?
Sara Bedford, Mark Pack and Caron Lindsay are the main three I read. I also read Paul Waugh and Olly Grender‘s pieces. Lynne Featherstone continues to inspire me, now a minister, a little more than before. Jeff Breslin (SNP Tactical Voting as was) is one of my favourite non-Lib Dem writers.

10. Give us a surprising fact about yourself:
I was a DJ in a gay pub (Admiral Duncan) and club (L’amour then Club 69) in Nottingham before leaving my home town in 1987/8.

You can see all our posts featuring Liberal Democrat bloggers here.

At the launch of the Yes2AV campaign, a tantalising glimpse into the future was offered for those who dream of a unification of the progressive left. On the stage at Methodist Central Hall sat Labour leader Ed Miliband, Green leader Caroline Lucas, and Liberal Democrat stalwarts Charles Kennedy and Shirley Williams. And Tim Farron, Lib Dem party president and a likely future leadership contender, was there too. However, Mark Pack, co-editor of Lib Dem Voice, warns against reading too much into the apparent bonhomie. “Coalitions are driven by parliamentary arithmetic far more than by politicians’ own preferences,” Pack says. “So the answer really depends on the public rather than how relations between politicians are affected by the referendum.

It also quotes Olly Grender on the possible policy implications of a No vote:

If the referendum is lost, then disgruntled Lib Dem backbenchers will be keen to contribute to a ‘shopping list’ for Nick Clegg to take to David Cameron. Insiders say the plans to reform the NHS will become a priority, while proposals for reform of the Upper House will be published at the end of the month. Olly Grender, former communications chief for the Lib Dems, sets out the desired gains from the NHS and Social Care Bill:

“There should be clear safeguards regarding the issue of competition and the private sector, and funding should be secured on the understanding that reform and reduction are impossible to achieve together,” Grender argues. “There should also be a change of pace regarding the introduction of GP consortia.” Further goals, says Grender, should include “a faster drive towards the increased threshold of £10,000 helping people on lowest incomes during the toughest times”, while greater safeguards of critical public services – “whilst continuing to try to pay down the deficit” – should, she says, be put in place. On top of House of Lords reform, Grender argues, climate change and social mobility need greater emphasis.

I’ve talked in more detail about what to watch out for in Thursday’s results in this YouTube clip:

(I recorded the video for my regular email newsletter about the Liberal Democrats. You can sign up to receive them by email yourself here.)

First of all, the Best of Clegg…

As Nicholas Watt notes in the Guardian, Nick has been ‘finding his feet’, and ‘starting to show in public what he has always claimed in private – that he stands up to Cameron’. This has been clear from the Lib Dem pressure to modify the Coalition’s plans for the NHS, Nick’s personal support for fairer votes, and the announcement of his social mobility strategy (notwithstanding the predictable sniping).

And then there’s the other bit of Nick Clegg…

Frankly, I don’t give a toss about the media’s snarky digs at Nick for happily confessing in his interview with Jemima Khan in the New Statesman to “crying regularly to music”. Nor do I have any time for those gutless commentators whose flip ‘man-up’ advice to Nick ignores his very real and human concerns at the impact his job, and the unpopularity that’s accompanied it, is having on his children. As Olly Grender notes in her New Statesman blog:

I had a chat last week with someone at editoral level at the Daily Mail. I asked a simple question: isn’t it the case that, whatever the Lib Dems do, whether you agree with them or not, you are likely to praise the Tories for the policy, but not Nick Clegg? I was assured that my assumption was entirely accurate. … Clegg could walk on water right now and the Daily Mail would see it as a failure or a blunder.

That the media has it in for Nick is obvious — but it does kinda make it even more important that Nick avoid self-inflicted wounds, too. And there is one very obvious clanger in his Staggers’ interview: “I didn’t even spend that much time campaigning on tuition fees.”

True, it was not one of the party’s top four campaign priorities during the election — but the pledge and the photos speak for themselves. For Nick to attempt to downplay the significance of the party’s anti-fees stance is faintly ludicrous, the more so as a media-handler was ever-present to prevent, as Ms Khan herself notes, her best attempts ‘to get him to say the wrong thing’.

How to reconcile the Two Cleggs?

I think there are three things to recognise.

First, that Nick won’t change, nor should he. Much of what I’ve always admired about him is his easy, open intelligence, his willingness to think hard and seriously about an issue. (I just wish, very occasionally, he’d think a little harder before he speaks.)

Secondly, though, that — as Olly points out — no matter how careful Nick is, what he says or how he says it, there are chunks of the media (notably the Mail and Telegraph) that will twist and distort to suit their own agenda.

And thirdly, that beleaguered as Nick might sometimes feel, the public does not mutely adopt the media’s prejudices. In her interview, Ms Khan tells an illuminating anecdote:

A beaming middle-aged woman who has spotted Clegg on the train passes a note to his aide. It reads: “I couldn’t resist such a unique opportunity to say, ‘Stick With It!’ The vast majority of us think the coalition are doing the right thing. We know it’s tough but it’s very necessary. All the best.” … He thanks the woman graciously and just as I am wondering if it was a set-up, Clegg jokes that it was. He often gets support from the public, he says, but the difference is that these days people whisper their congratulations, “as if it’s a guilty secret saying anything nice about Nick Clegg”.

The media narrative is that Nick is the most unpopular politician in Britain. As I’ve pointed out before, that’s not true: most Tory voters and a majority of Lib Dems rate him as doing a good job; Labour voters do appear to dislike him. So it is not that Nick is unpopular; it’s that he’s divisive.

For a politician, that’s not all bad. At least it means people have an opinion. Eighteen months ago, Nick’s popularity ratings were higher, but that was a sign of indifference, of powerlessness, not of strength. Nick has often spoken of his liberal, British values: tolerance and justice. There are other values, too: respect for tenacity, and a liking for the underdog to have its day.

In other words: stick with it, Nick.

Here’s Olly’s take on the subject:

When I hear the regular accusation about lack of a mandate, I have some sympathy. No, really — I do. But that begs several questions. How is it defined? Is a written constitution the only way of defining it? Until a Government is elected with over fifty per cent of the vote, does it lack a mandate? Is a simple Parliamentary majority sufficient? Or do we need a better voting system to reflect peoples’ wishes more accurately?

In Tony Blair’s autobiography he struggled with definitions of mandate following the 2005 general election:

“I couldn’t get the argument heard ……. It found insufficient echo among other Labour speakers and very little within the media. The result was a campaign and mandate that meant different things to different people. I was completely certain: the manifesto and the mandate was one for New Labour, but the absence of serious policy discussion meant there was no sense of that being so.”

For the last few weeks, I have tweeted asking for definitions of mandate. Replies have come back saying predominantly “not what this government is doing”, or “the scale of reform and the pace of change do not have any support’. But equally, I would argue that what is clear is that there was absolutely no mandate for keeping Labour in power.

You can read the whole piece, and contribute to the discussion, here.

Technically born Beatrice Nancy Seear, but known by her middle name, Nancy Seear in her time was one of the most prominent Liberal and then Liberal Democrat female politicians with a formidable grasp of detail, an impressive speech-making ability and a recurrent sense of fun.

Born in Croydon just before the First World War, in 1913, she also saw close up the horrors of the rise of Nazism during her time in Germany in the 1930s – an experience that she later gave as one of her three reasons for being a Liberal Democrat. During the Second World War she worked at the Ministry of Aircraft Production, and moved on the London School of Economics, initially as a Reader in Personnel Management, where she stayed until her death in 1997.

Seven times an unsuccessful general election candidate, starting in Hornchurch in 1950 and ending in Wakefield in 1970, she always finished third but finally made it to Parliament when she was created a life peer in 1971. That elevation, combined with the death two years earlier of Lady Violet Bonham Carter, meant she was the party’s most high profile female campaigner for a long period of time.

She was not a campaigner in the community politics sense, for she never put down deep roots in any of the constituencies she contested, but instead she relied heavily on the power of oratory to motivate and sway people. That was a skill well deployed in the more fruitful environment of the House of Lords, party conferences and meetings. Her campaigning enthusiasm also led her into a huge number of voluntary organisations, with many posts held at different times.

Olly Grender’s account of her experience of Nancy Seear during the revelation of Paddy Ashdown’s affair in 1992 is typical of Seear’s no-nonsense enthusiasm for the cause:

All the senior men in the party hid, quite literally, in their offices. We were getting slaughtered on air with no one to talk for the party. I sent a grovelling message to the elderly Baroness Nancy Seear, Economist, Titan, Good Egg, who stormed into the Press Office and announced loudly in her best Margaret Rutherford tones “my dear I have a past and I don’t know many people who don’t, now which studio do you want me to go into first?”

She was full of pointed, effective rhetoric, once deriding cynicism as the lazy person’s excuse for ignorance, yet retaining a good humoured approach to politics: her advice to one Liberal (Liz Barker) on how to decide whether or not to attend different meetings was simply, “Always go if there is food”.

Her expertise in personnel and economic issues made her a regular and respected contributer to the economic debates in the Lords. In 1981 she chaired the Lord’s Select Committee looking at unemployment.

Nancy Seear was wont to be rather critical of the feminist movement, but was an energetic campaigner for equal pay and had a time as President of the Fawcett Society. In 1972 she introduced a bill on pay discrimination that played an important part in the campaign which secured the 1975 Equal Pay Act. The Times reflected this in its praise in 1972: “Her works, on equal pay and opportunities, are for ever either being quoted, looked up or written down”.

In 1984 Nancy Seear became leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords, just before the introduction of television coverage of the Lords’s proceedings brought greater public prominence to the main figures in the Lords. It was a speech of hers that was the first to be televised from the Lords.

Lady Seear also became a regular on shows such as BBC1′s Question Time and a favourite of its audiences with her witty put-downs of far younger fellow panellists. Her humour was less in evidence when she once turned to John Prescott on one TV show, telling him to “Shut up!” – but such was her formidable character, that it worked.

A strong supporter of the SDP / Liberal Party merger in 1988, she happily stood aside to let Roy Jenkins become the leader of the new Liberal Democrat party in the Lords, becoming his deputy until her death in 1997 a few days before the party’s major electoral leap forward.

As Roy Jenkins put it at the time of Nancy Seear’s death: “She was a devoted servant of Liberalism, a speaker of spontaneous force and a personality of peculiar sweetness and generosity” and as David Rendel when selecting Nancy Seear as one of his Liberal heroes:

Nancy was, above all, a great liberal. Someone who regarded the state with the suspicion it deserves. Someone whose prime focus was helping people to achieve their full potential, to lead their own path in life as they would wish to. But Nancy coupled her intellect with an undying self-belief and a practical determination to see liberalism in action. She worked tirelessly in election campaigns and in the House of Lords.

The tributes paid to her in the Lords on her death are recorded in Hansard here.

For the other posts in this series see our Forgotten Liberal Heroes page.

Today it is Olly Grender, who blogs at http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/olly-grender.

1. What’s your formative political memory?
A toss up between my Mum voting in favour of joining Europe in the referendum and my Dad feeling agitated about and improving workers rights in industry.

2. When did you start blogging?
In January, so please be gentle with me! (though all constructive feedback from fellow LibDems welcome).

3. Why did you start blogging?
Have been thinking of doing it for some time, as occasionally you need a few more words than Twitter or broadcasting allows – plus the New Statesman asked me!

4. What five words would you use to describe your blog?
Politics, liberalism, media, coalition, punditry.

5. What five words would you use to describe your political views?
Liberal – that is all.

6. Which post have you most liked writing in the last year (and why)?
As a total novice there is little to choose from. However I enjoyed having a pop at the Daily Telegraph in this one about Nick Clegg’s Red Box.

7. Which post have you most liked reading in the last year (and why)?
I thought this was the most astounding blog of 2010. It’s by Peter Watt, former General Secretary to the Labour Party, and it summed up in so many ways why working with Labour right now would be such a challenge because, as Peter describes, they currently have an inability to listen and struggle to believe that others in politics wish to do good.

8. What’s your favourite YouTube clip?
God would love to do something political but I LOVE this Virgin Atlantic ad soooooooooo beautifully done I could watch it over and over. Enjoy!

9. Which bloggers, writers or thinkers inspire you?
I like writers that surprise, even if I disagree, such as Peter Oborne, John Rentoul and Matthew Parris. The amount of work Andrew Rawnsley puts into both his books and columns rewards the reader. If you share my fascination with the use of rhetoric then Max Atkinson’s blog is a brilliant guide and I love reading Gaby Hinsliff.

Recently I have been really impressed with the insights into the Lib Dem side of the coalition with Allegra Stratton at the Guardian. Paul Waugh is the essential political blog in spite of his recent move from the Evening Standard to Politics Home.

10. Give us a surprising fact about yourself:
I played the clarinet in a jazz band as a teenager.

You can see all our posts featuring Liberal Democrat bloggers here.

A large chunk of that policy is now very much back on the political agenda, as ConservativeHome reports:

According to the Times, [George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith have] now reached a settlement, which marks a “considerable victory” for Duncan Smith -

“Millions of welfare claimants will have their benefits scrapped and replaced with one “universal credit” under a ground-breaking deal secured by Iain Duncan Smith.

“Housing benefit, income support, incapacity benefit and dozens of other payments are set to go after the Work and Pensions Secretary won a months-long dispute with George Osborne, the Chancellor, over whether the reforms were affordable.

“The new system will carry a guarantee that anyone in work will be better off than someone on the dole. Claimants will be allowed to keep more of their benefits when they take a job or increase their hours.”

The plan isn’t finalised: “Details under discussion include how quickly the benefit would be withdrawn when a claimant finds work” …  The Times points out that “Mr Duncan Smith will be allowed to claim up front “a large chunk” of the expected £9 billion of savings which he predicts can be made every year from lower administration costs and reduced fraud.”

Two changes have made this sort of simplification and integration possible in a way that was not previously. The changing taxation IT systems means that it is moving towards being a system that alters payments or liabilities at a pace which matches that of benefits. The growth too of tax credits means there is a part of the tax system that can more easily be integrated with the benefits system than was the case when this sort of policy was a regular feature in Liberal Democrat speeches.

However, it does all depends on IT systems working and administration savings really being made. Moreover, as Alex Wilcock pointed out to me, the plans also look to require either a substantial increase in benefit for people unable to find work or a sharp cut for those unable to work. The combination of Conservatives and budget deficit means the latter is looking much more likely, though we will have to wait until the details come out to know for sure.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal’s Iain Martin credits Nick Clegg with a key role in ensuring that the welfare budget is reformed rather than simply cut. Hat-tip: Olly Grender.

As I walked through Liverpool in the evening I strongly suspect that those girls dressed up to the nines, well kind of in nothing actually, had no idea they were hosting a party of Government in their hometown.

That is what is so great about conference, we are all in our own warm cosy bubble – where politics matters. We can have really intense discussions, too often ‘til the early hours. We often don’t get to see any news bulletins until our return. At which point we are normally horrified to discover that the media went to another conference altogether.

This time it was different, the endless searches for angry people bore little fruit. The conference had a deeply familiar friendly feel. Nothing like the slightly over pompous grandeur I remember at Labour’s conference in ’97. On the whole the coverage was fair. I thought it was nicely captured by Decca Aitkenhead in the Guardian describing the Party as “pragmatic, patient and optimistic”, with “a striking absence of political ego”.

Ironically as someone in PR I felt that some of the Ministers over obsessed with the media. They are in Government now and in my view should grow a thicker skin and just get on with it, and leave the media analysis to people like me. Easier said than done I appreciate but still.

Scenes that I thoroughly enjoyed were seeing the Special Advisers up late chatting with and enjoying talking to Party members. We do all tend to still know each other. For instance Jonny Oates, Clegg’s Chief of Staff has greater activist credentials than many in the Party. This Party is under his skin, not just his day job.

It was striking watching fringe meetings where ministers are obviously thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to get something done. There are some who are clearly not and that was deeply disappointing.

Coalition is the consequence of pluralism. Andrew Sparrow nicely summed it up admitting that we as a party got it, unlike the media. David Rendel who voted against the coalition put it well “we are in it now and have to make it work”. I think that sums up the approach of those who were most worried.

Finally there was a marvelous cringe making blog by Alex Barker from the FT, listing all LibDem disasters at conferences past. The funniest of which is someone once saying the eyes of the world were upon us in 1958. Well now they are. Great isn’t it.

Here’s her conclusion:

So what is the correct answer? Celebrate the differences? Or talk about the team? I suspect that the holy Grail of “being distinctive” at a national rather than local level is far less realisable than people think. In pure communications terms it requires time and resources which are in short supply. If you are a Special Adviser spending all your time putting out the fires of distinctiveness, is that time that would be better spent on getting on with the governing? Perhaps this is something that comes at the end of a five-year term, not the beginning. In the bars of Liverpool tonight this eclectic family will be getting together to solve this issue.

You can read Olly’s full post here.

Now it is of course the silly season, and we can easily write off this journalistic confection as mere desperation to fill some column inches / dead air-time. But actually I think it’s a symptom of a wider malaise in political journalism, its ‘tabloidisation’.

How an unsourced rumour went viral

Let’s go back to Friday afternoon, when the Kennedy defection rumours started circulating, and work out how they came to be the lead story on TV news by Saturday lunchtime.

They first emanated on the Labour-supporting blog, Left Futures, in a story written by Mark Seddon, a journalist with deep Labour roots but not at all plugged into the Lib Dems. The post, Charles Kennedy Considers Defecting To Labour, caused something of a stir on Twitter.

At this point, responsible journalists would have asked themselves a couple of questions:

1) What’s the source for this story?
Mr Seddon’s article refers lazily to “Westminster sources”, with only one even vague attribution (“including one close to Ed Miliband’s Labour leadership campaign”). No-one close to Mr Kennedy, or even within the Lib Dems, is referenced.

Within a couple of hours of the story being re-tweeted, Olly Grender – someone who is well-placed within the Lib Dems as its former communications director – had dismissed it out of hand: “Charles Kennedy rumour re defection is total fiction – a Labour generated silly season story – nice try @Ed_Miliband”.

2) Who stands to benefit from the story?
Any responsible journalist would have considered the different angles to the story, and who would have an advantage in seeing it further circulated.

Mr Kennedy himself would be an obvious possibility: he is known to be unhappy with the Coalition, and so the story has a certain plausibility. However, if he were actually seeking to defect (i) he would not want the story leaked out, and (ii) he would most certainly not want it done through such an obscure channel as Left Futures. Which leaves the possibility that he was attempting to fire a warning shot across the party’s boughs. But, again, if that were his intention why not place an article or interview in one of the Sunday heavyweight newspapers? In other words, there is no logical reason to believe Charles Kennedy could be the source. And clearly the Lib Dems have no reason to spread the rumour, which leaves only one possibility…

Mischief-making by Labour, whether directly connected to Ed Miliband’s campaign or another leadership contender’s. This seems to be by far the most likely explanation, especially as the official party also was willing to go on the record to laugh off the possibility, and that Charles Kennedy himself contacted Nick Clegg by email to rubbish it. Responsible journalists would at the very least have asked the ‘who benefits?’ question, and reflected it in their reporting of the situation.

Incidentally, if it did come from Ed Miliband’s campaign, it seems a peculiarly ill-judged move. Mr E. Miliband has succeeded in looking like he enjoys spreading rumours and playing games while simultaneously antagonising Lib Dems; he should leave such tactics to Ed Balls, if he doesn’t want to gain the same tainted reputation. And if it came from his campaign team and wasn’t personally authorised by him, that strikes me as a worryingly chaotic state of affairs.

As far as I can make out, no journalist thought about asking these two vital questions: who’s the source and who benefits from the story. If they did, it certainly wasn’t apparent from their highly speculative reports.

Why not? Because it fitted with the news media’s current meme that the Lib Dems are on the point of collapse. Again, the evidence for this is patchy. Party membership is on the up, The Voice’s surveys of party members show high levels of satisfaction, and our poll ratings are at their usual summer levels.

That’s not to deny the difficulties the party is currently experiencing, which the news media is perfectly entitled to report. But the job of responsible journalism should be to present an accurately balanced picture, not simply to see if it can self-justify its own negative spin.

The long-term problem for journalism

This is, in Mr Kennedy’s own words, simply “the silliest of silly season stories”, one which will soon blow over, and be forgotten. But it points again to a news media which has forgotten its purpose – to question, to challenge, to analyse: to help citizens make sense of the world they live in.

This should worry journalists, whether they represent the most downmarket tabloid news outlets (like the Sun, Mail and Sky News), or the more upmarket ones. As my colleague Mark Pack points out, journalism which loses the trust of its audience is not a sustainable business model.

What the Kennedy defection rumours point to is a news media which is mistaking reporting for re-tweeting. Time for journalists to get back to basics.