Willie Rennie has given a candid interview to the Scotsman about the prospects for the Liberal Democrats and our record in government. Given the tuition fees question, he is apologetic but asks people to look at the whole picture:
Saying sorry isn’t a tactic,” he insists. “People who are annoyed with us will be annoyed with us, but they deserve an apology. Some will never understand or forgive. They’re entitled to do that. My only plea to them is look at all the things we’re getting right, not just the thing we got wrong.”
Repentance and sincerity are unnatural political bedfellows, but convincing Scotland’s electorate you mean what you say should be easier for a Fifer with a buzzcut than an Old Etonian.
We’re comrades, I’m not going to start distancing myself from anyone.
Sometimes we make mistakes and deliver things we don’t agree with. In government there’s a range of really tough choices; that’s real life. But I’d go back into power tomorrow if we were given the chance. It’s been tough but I’m glad we were there to make it a bit easier
“We’ve made some attempts to mitigate bedroom tax and we’ve cut tax so those on minimum wage won’t be paying any tax at all,” the father of two counters. “I think that’s cracking – one of the best policies for generations.”
SUCH work, Mr Rennie hopes, will restore his party to government. It is not showing in the polls, he says, but “inch by inch”, Lib Dem voters from 2010 who are undecided are slowly coming back to the fold.
“It was £7 a month rent and £7 a month rates,” he recalls of his Withnail & I-inspired hovel. “There was no hot water, no shower and an outside toilet that was stinking, ha ha! I used to have to go to the Storey Street baths to wash. Sometimes you’d run out of food and plead to the parents to send more money.
“I had that back-up – I’m not going to pretend I’ve lived the life a lot of people are.”
And, finally, he talks about running with a 50kg sack of coal round his neck:
The sack sits round your shoulder, you have to put your head down – take your time,” advises Mr Rennie. “Slow and steady is best. It might be painful along the way, but when you get to the end, it’s exhilarating.”
It is an apt strategy for Lib Dems in coalition. After 7 May perhaps, they will happily grin and bear it once more.
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4 Comments
I like Willie Rennie. He reminds me of the time when Liberal Democrats used to win parliamentary byelections.
I like Willie Rennie too. Even more after he chaired a discussion tab I was on at a Liberal Democrat conference.
Brings back the house of multiple occupation I lived in for half a year when I was a student. 2 stories and attic. 2 friends and I had the two rooms and kitchen on the ground floor and the outside toilet (on occasion we did have to dig a path through a foot of snow to get access…). The first floor had a middle-aged unemployed man who coughed a lot and school teacher. Also the only inside toilet and the bathroom. Top floor – 3 Ugandan students. All male (except the school-teacher’s girlfriend visited a lot), but both black and white and both Protestant and Catholic.
The Students’ Union, from Victorian times, had a basement largely composed of bathrooms, so that’s where we went for baths.
Ian Sanderson (RM3) 20th Apr ’15 – 7:53am
There is a lot I recognise in your reminiscences, Ian. Was university perhaps more about domestic survival skills than academic ability?
In the short-life housing that I had experience of in my twenties we housed an interesting and very diverse group of homeless people. Sharing kitchens and bathrooms with people from all sorts of backgrounds can be an education it itself. I was not a student but a very junior civil servant so my daytime experience was entirely different from my home life.
I guess with the drastic shortage of affordable housing for young people in the South East of England such experiences are becoming common again.