Author Archives: Charles Anglin

I didn’t vote for Ming Campbell to be party leader, but I’ve never been one of those who have criticised his leadership, I have had no time for those who listened to the media fluff about dissent in the party over his style & age. In fact his first year has been better than I expected or even hoped for. He has imposed a degree of organisational rigour on the party that was sadly lacking previously, he has set a clear policy lead challenging much of the party´s soggy corporatist hobby horses and he has generally repaired and steadied a ship that was badly holed below the water line by Charles Kennedy’s messy departure.

So far, so good or at least until last weekend it was. 

Ming’s speech to the party’s Spring Conference has left me deeply worried about the strategic direction of the party and the advice that he is getting. In his speech he laid out Five Tests for a Gordon Brown government. This was at best a very peculiar thing to do. Don’t get me wrong the tests themselves were perfectly sound in as far as they went, though they were a little vague and with one or two glaring omissions. However, publicly declaring them was I believe a serious tactical error.

One of Charles Kennedy’s significant achievements as Party Leader was to reach a point where the Lib Dems were being judged, for better or for worse, on our own agenda and our own terms. He did this by resolutely refusing to discuss the idea of pacts, deals or coalitions, until journalists finally became bored of receiving the same non-answer, something he even managed to maintain under the intense pressure of two General Elections.

That achievement is now being undermined. Although the 5 Tests were presented to the party as criteria for judging a pre-election Brown Government it is clear from the media reaction that virtually no-one has taken them at face value. They are widely seen as the opening gambit for coalition talks should Labour be the largest party in a hung Parliament after the next general election. Even if they genuinely are not, that is how they are perceived, perceived by the public, the media and by the Labour party.