Over on his blog Jonathan Calder makes a good point about the speech-making abilities of Liberal Democrat President Tim Farron:
My impression of Tim is that he is very good at saying things people agree with. So in Cumbria he is against second homes and in favour of farming subsidies and Kendal mint cake…
Now that Tim Farron is being spoken of as a possible party leader, he needs to risk the odd unpopular speech. Someone in that class cannot always be telling people what they want to hear.
There’s certainly a role for funny and uplifting speeches, but I always think it is a real shame if all someone giving speeches ever says are things everyone would have thought before hearing any of their speeches – especially if the speech giver is as gifted an orator as Tim. Simply telling people what they already thought is a waste of the opportunity given to you when you have a room or hall full of people looking your way and listening.
Providing people with new information or new perspectives is one way of taking that opportunity, but so too is telling people things they didn’t agree with at the start of your speech.
So, I’m in the queue behind Jonathan wanting to hear a speech from Tim Farron that I disagree with – at least in parts.
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19 Comments
Happily, this is not a problem I share: http://www.theliberati.net/quaequamblog/2011/09/20/sorry-tim-but-community-politics-is-not-about-winning-elections/
It’s not a recent speech, but I remember Tim making an impact some years ago – at the height of the scare that “Frankenstein” GM foods were the fruit of the devil – when he was the only speaker against a ban / moratorium in a Lib Dem Conference debate, and knew it (from a more pro-science than pro-farmer position, I think, though I may remember mistily). So he’s certainly capable of telling the party things they don’t want to hear, and if at some stage he aspires to the top job, certainly, he needs to take risks again.
The position of Party President is a difficult one from which to challenge party orthodoxy, though; the Leader can lead in a new direction and hope their troops will rally round; the President’s job has always been more of a conciliator who keeps all the different parts of the party together (certainly in public), surely?
As I said on Jonathon’s blog:
“My primary reason for campaigning for Tim in the Presidential election was because, as well as the attributes you set out above, I thought we needed a President who would cheer us up during a difficult few years.
In that respect I have no problem at all with him making light of a serious issue as he did about accreditation. Our ability to not take ourselves too seriously is one of our strengths, and Tim taps into that very well.
On your broader point, yes, if Tim has serious ambitions he will have start to show a more serious side as time goes on. But at the moment he is still in year one of his most senior role so far. I think he has time to enjoy that for a bit longer before getting too serious.”
I’ve heard him say something I disagree with- when he spoke a couple of years ago in favour of state funded faith schools having discriminatory admissions policies.
My problem is that I would like him to say something of substance that I agree with. I couldn’t disagree with anything in his conference speech, but then there wasn’t much of real substance there, brilliantly delivered though it was. If he is to be a party leader he’s going to need more substance, but then maybe when he told Andrew Neil that he wasn’t interested in being party leader he was telling the truth.
@ Richard , sounds like Tim was talking sense. Why on earth would we want to interfere with one of the most successful groups of state schools?
But leaving that aside I hope Tim sticks to his views on free schools. If he starts changing what he says because he is campaigning to be leader then he really will not deserve anyone’s votes.
Farming subsidies? No thanks.
Sorry, meant faith schools!
@Simon McGrath:
That’s much easier to be successful if you select (and that’s the ONLY reason faith schools are ‘more successful’).
As long as faith school are state-funded, they should not have a different admission code to regular secular ones.
If they want to discriminate, then they should go private.
Tim said the other day is for the separation of state and church.. then he should disagree with state funded faith schools (particularly if they’re allowed to select at all on faith grounds).
I like Tim Farron, but it’s a concern that there is any talk of him as a possible party leader of the future, particularly at this time. That’s simple mischief-making by people who wish to distract from the real business of making a success of this government. LibDem electoral success in 2015 is tied to the fate of the coalition.
While I agree that he would need to challenge the membership with some strategic policy adjustments for him to make a bid for the LibDem leadership I would advise him against doing so.
Farron is a talented politician but he would risk over-selling himself and the party if he did. So let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let him set his sights on a top ministerial position (environment, perhaps) instead. If, and only then, after proving himself, and with a track record to support promotion, should his further potential be considered.
Maybe in the meantime he should prepare some foundations by writing a book to lay out his personal narrative.
GM crops? No thanks.
For a list of very scientific reasons that are off-topic here.
Not everything blokes in white coats invent is of benefit.
“in Cumbria he is against second homes and in favour of farming subsidies”
It sounds like any liberal who wants to disagree with Tim just needs to go to Cumbria.
Kendal mint cake is ducking disgusting. There, I disagree with Farron on something! All this talk of leadership needs to go to one side until he’s proved he can walk the walk, not just talk the talk…
It saddens me how illiberal most Liberals are on “faith schools”. Take
Tim said the other day is for the separation of state and church.. then he should disagree with state funded faith school
Well, no. “Separation of state and church” means the state should not dictate what churches say or do, and should not favour on over the other. Equal funding of schools with any faith basis seems to me to be perfectly in accord with the separation of state and church. Snatching children away from their faith culture and refusing to let parents educate their children in that culture (unless they are wealthy) is to me, at least arguably, state interference with churches and thus against the principle of separation of church and state.
I’m aware of the arguments on both sides, but what particularly saddens me is that there seems to be such a knee-jerk anti-faith school mentality amongst most LibDems that it’s hard to put the counter arguments. I know (as it certainly has been the case in the past) that in coming out public with the other side, I am most likely to be on my own here, subject to a fair amount of abuse, ad that if I am to do justice to the case must now spend many many hours counteracting prejudiced follow-ups to my initial quite simple point. So let me say now, I don’t have time for all that, I shall very much try just to leave it at this and resist the temptation to reply to the sort of anti-religious bigotry that is likely to follow.
It might be useful to establish that I am most in favour of the settlement over “faith schools” which was established with the “Voluntary Aided” scheme. That is, they are subject to some sort of Local Authority overview. I say this because the opponents like to freely juggle these terms, so sometimes they use “faith school” to mean your standard VA school, but much of their talk is on “free schools” established outside the VA system. I accept that religion can be dangerous and oppressive, it is just for this reason that I think the VA system is a good compromise – I very much prefer open state overseen faith schools” to shadowy independent ones.
On
That’s much easier to be successful if you select (and that’s the ONLY reason faith schools are ‘more successful’).
Actually, no it isn’t. There is evidence that the social involvement that goes along with being an active member of a faith community is beneficial in general to children. A similar benefit is seen with any sort of communal social activity, active party political membership being another. Essentially it means children grow up with a more balanced view of the world, rather than one in which their culture is dictated entirely by mass media entertainment.
Indeed, my position in this issue has developed because I do see mass media entertainment as in effect the state religion. The “stars” and “celebs” are the manufactured gods, the business interests behind them are the priesthood pushing the religion as “opium for the people”. I therefore see moves to ban faith schools as in effect forcing parents to have their children brought up in a background where this religion of celebrity is the only one allowed. I am a liberal, I am against that sort of thing.
On Mr Farron, he has publicly expressed disagreement with “right to buy” of council houses, which I do think is sticking his neck out, as it’s still a policy few dare openly attack (indeed, was it Balls or Miliband, I don’t really care, but some Labour big shot just recently who was at pains to say he thought Labour got it wrong on council housing in the 1980s). This was perhaps the classic Thatcher era policy that looked good at the time, but whose ill effects are increasingly coming out. Indeed, if the state was not paying out such huge amounts in housing benefit to line the pockets of private landlords now there is little council housing becoming available, public finances would be much more healthy than they are. The finance and debt booming resulting from council housing being removed as an option for all but the actual homeless played a major part in the economic crash. It is also a big REAL barrier to entrepreneurialism – secure cheap housing is what the budding entrepreneur needs to be able to take risks. Otherwise, the only people who can afford to take the risks are the wealthy, which is what those who suppose the 50% tax rate is the biggest barrier to entrepreneurialism are saying. Only a useless out-of-touch clueless about real life person could think that way – listen, rich thickoes, do you REALLY think the biggest thing stopping your average person starting up a small business is the fear of the taxation they’d have to pay if they become millionaires?
Sorry, I digress.
In general though, I agree, I have tried over time to make Mr Farron out, but I can’t. It’s all pretty bland stuff from him, isn’t it?
We ought not to let the media play the game of “next Lib Dem leader” with us. That’s how we ended up with the disaster that is … oh, I won’t go on. Essentially, they don’t have a clue about us, and they don’t care, so they’ll seize on someone who scrubs up well and is “one of us” and declare that person as such. Given that the names of people in our party they know can be counted on the fingers of one hand, that’s not a choice from many. They will always favour people who look and talk like media people, which means a certain sort of demeanour, accent etc which I don’t think is necessarily going to pull this party ahead. I long for the day when we have a leader who is a bit more rough round the edges and doesn’t fit the media stereotype of “the next leader”. Our party tries too hard to win by being just like the others. We should try instead to win by being different.
it woudl be nice to see him come out against our government’s disastrous support for the draft NPPF, which rips up the English planning system and repalces it with a developer’s charter. I wrote about it back in June, and was told then that my fears were unfounded. I would hope that concerns expressed by the CPRE, RSPB, RTPI, WI, ABI, Telegraph and others might make my concerns seem less unfounded now. Where does Tim stand on this vital issue?
@Mark Pack
I like Tim Farron, I really do. If he took your advice, it’d probably build his image as a potential leader, and help his chances of succeeding Nick Clegg.
But I really hope he doesn’t take your advice. His job at the moment is to rally the troops, get us out there on the doorstep. Give members the confidence to get out campaigning, to go out and listen to people.
His job is not to put an alternative vision to Nick Clegg. Nor should he focus on defending the government – we’ve a bunch of ministers who already have that job. His job is to sell the party to the membership, and make us feel good about ourselves, and encourage us to work to win as many council seats as we can in 2012.
That’s what he’s doing, I hope it’s what he continues to do.
What George Kendall said. Someday Tim will need to take up positions but not in his current role, not yet.
Well, I don’t know. I think it is good that as the party president, he has made it his job to talk to the party and talk for the party, rather than for the coalition. We need a voice like that. And he is a great communicator, as far as I can tell anyway.
But (there had to be a ‘but’, right?) a good leader challenges his people and doesn’t just say what they want to hear. And I think in these hard times, we definitely need home truths as well as we need cheering up (I certainly wouldn’t want him to stop cheering us up, since he is brilliant at it).
And after I listened to his speech, I was trying to describe to myself what the effect was. I was pleased, but somehow, I also I felt uneasy. I settled on ‘you almost heard the audience purring with pleasure’ when somebody asked me to describe the effect. But deep down, it was another p-word I was desperately trying to avoid. Dare I say it – in the end, it reminded me a bit too much of populism. I suppose that saying things LibDems want to hear is hardly ever going to be populist in the wider sense, but frankly, I am not in the LibDems because I want to hear populist rhetoric which is designed to make me switch off my critical faculties and nod along happily for 20 minutes (at least not when it’s a speech specifically aimed at the hall). I’d like to hear a bit more of a challenge, and I demand to be made to think, and think hard. I would have hoped that he can trust us with treating us a bit more like grown-ups who can take a proper debate.
I think that Tim Farron is playing a very clever game. He has been loyal to the party leadership on most things (apart from tuition fees). But he deliberately plays a different tune. He attacks free market fundamentalism. He “praised” Nick Clegg for removing Blairism from the NHS bill. Is that a big deal you might think? Yes it is actually. I saw Oliver Letwin give a speech at Centre Forum recently and he said that the localism bill is all about reintroducing Blairism. It was Gordon Brown who put the stop on public service reform, and I think we were supposed to boo at that point. Free schools and academies, NHS reforms are all what Tony Blair wanted to do, and it is what the Orange Book Liberals want to do as well.
I do not think that Tim Farron is a true believer in all this. When Nick Clegg packs it all in, he will be the change candidate, and Jeremy Browne, Danny Alexander and Ed Davey are likely to be the keep things as they are candidates.