18 Comments

• David Morton 27th Apr '08 - 3:21pm

  A Third party speaker is long over due and Ming would be excellent. Alan Beith would be good as well. Either that or skip a generation and go for a Young reformer. I hear that John Bercow would be interested.

• davy 27th Apr '08 - 3:59pm

  Ming for eader???
  BBC 27.4.08
  The Lib Dems should be doing better in the polls with the government in trouble on several fronts, the party’s deputy leader Vince Cable has said.

  “We are not doing as well as we hoped we would be, I’m not complacent,” he told The Politics Show.

  An ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph put the Lib Dems on 20%, which Mr Cable said was lower than he would like.

  He made no reference to Nick Clegg’s leadership………….

• Iain 27th Apr '08 - 4:10pm

  Another bloody Scot in charge, don’t they have enough representation with their own Parliament?

• Cheltenham Robin 27th Apr '08 - 4:36pm

  Says a man named Iain

• Stuart 27th Apr '08 - 4:49pm

  No thanks. It’s a pointless way of reducing our party’s parliamentary strength by one.

• Iain 27th Apr '08 - 6:19pm

  “Says a man named Iain”

  Yes I do say, but then its unlikely the Libdems will recognise the problem after all they are join partners in the devolution arrangement which has so disadvantaged English people, with their MP’s/MSP’s falling over themselves to discriminate against English people. After all it was the Libdem MSP, Jim Wallace, whilst a Minister in the last Scottish Government who brought foreword proposals to financially discriminate against English students studying in Scotland, and Ming Campbell did nothing about what amounts to racism. So would English people see Ming Campbell as an impartial referee in the Commons, who could barely contain his desire to jump into bed with Brown? I don’t think so!

• Richard Church 27th Apr '08 - 6:33pm

  Iain,
  Accusing people of racism just after posting ‘another bloody Scot’ is a bit rich. Tuition fee policy is based on where people live, not their racial origins.

  Do you accuse English universities of racism for charging overseas students different tuition fees?

• Iain 27th Apr '08 - 6:45pm

  “Accusing people of racism just after posting ‘another bloody Scot’ is a bit rich. Tuition fee policy is based on where people live, not their racial origins. ”

  Well I think it a valid accusation in light of the discriminatory constitutional arrangement created by the Lib/Lab partnership, that denies English people Executive representation whilst giving it to all the other nations of the UK.

  But you are wrong about the tuition fees, for its fine for a state to look after its own people, but that’s not what Jim Wallace’s proposal did, for it sought to single out English students studying in Scotland and get them to pay higher tuition fees, not French, not German, not Spanish, but it was English students they wanted to financially penalise, and that’s RACIST!

  So why don’t the Libdems admit they are a racist anti English party, for that’s the sum of their constitutional meddling and policies, for how else do you describe the action to make a people Constitutionally second class citizens, other than racist?

• Mike Falchikov 27th Apr '08 - 6:48pm

  Much prefer Ming to remain as our Foreign affairs spokesperson. To aspire to be
  speaker is very much an insider’s view of
  Westminster. To those of us out at the
  grass roots,it looks like a waste of an
  excellent MP.

• Iain Roberts 27th Apr '08 - 6:48pm

  @davy: good to see Vince Cable acknowledging the obvious about the polls.

  The slightly odd situation at the moment is that all three parties will be looking at the polls and knowing they should be doing better than they are.

• David Morton 27th Apr '08 - 7:12pm

  The Speaker of the House of Commons has acrucial role in defending parliament against the Executive. I think a liberal in the role would be wonderful. I’d rather deliver focus in the rain for that prospect than reelecting another anonymous “local champion” or a time serving Cllr whoes forgotten what its all about. Go Ming !

• matt severn 27th Apr '08 - 8:03pm

  ming would be excellent in the role, but sadly I think Sir’s George Young or Alan Haselhurst will get it, due to Tory desire to have one of ‘theirs’ as speaker.

• Stuart 27th Apr '08 - 8:31pm

  Iain. There is a party, the English Democrats, whose sole purpose is to argue for an English Parliament. English voters are being denied nothing – if they want an English Parliament then they can vote for the English Democrats. Let’s see how well they do in the London elections this Thursday.

• Mark Wright 27th Apr '08 - 11:24pm

  Ming is to valuable to lose to the Speaker’s chair. Sir Alan Haselhurst would make a good speaker anyway.

• Oranjepan 27th Apr '08 - 11:36pm

  Ming would be an excellent choice, but I fear he may be too closely identified with our party’s cause and this may damage his case.
  I’m a big fan of Ming, and though he was never suited to the media’s figurehead requirements of leader I think he does deserve to land a job which he can really sink his teeth into.

• Kevin 27th Apr '08 - 11:39pm

  Ming would honourably do the existing job as Speaker which is not one that the Lib Dems should accept. This Speaker, like all previous ones in my lifetime, has been a toady of the two-party system, and I cannot believe that Ming would break out of that.

• Nigel Ashton 28th Apr '08 - 12:33am

  Ming is a quintessential establishment man. He would be useless as a reforming Speaker, which is what the HoC really needs.

• Hywel Morgan 28th Apr '08 - 8:55am

  I agree Nigel – Ming has many fine qualities but one of the problems he had as leader was the lack of willingness to take on the “establishment”. That’s the last character trait Parliament needs in a new speaker.

  What would be interesting would be if someone like Norman Baker or Bob Marshall-Andrews (if re-elected) threw their hat into the ring to be next speaker as a stalking horse for reform. I doubt they’d win but it would put down a marker.