Lord Bonkers' Diary: Reviewing David Laws’ memoirs

Friday

A breeze stirs the May blossom, inspiring me to prop open the French windows in the Library. I settle down to review David Laws’ memoir of his time in government for the High Leicestershire Radical and am embarrassed by my inability to find the volume. Only after I have led my staff in a systematic search do I find it propping open those windows.

I find the book has three heroes: Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander and, above all, Laws himself. (Poor Huhne and High-Voltage Cable, who must be admitted to know how many beans make five, do not get a look in.)

Still, one has to admire the mordant wit of Jonny Oates, as quoted by Laws: “Your constituents will be mad if they do not re-elect you, Danny. And if they don’t, we should ask for all that money back that has been sprayed around your area – the extra ski lifts and the gold-lined roads.” Except that, if you have been to Badenoch lately, you will know that Oates was speaking no more than the truth.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary

• Freddie and Fiona at Remain
• The jellyfish of the Lakeland fells

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Jasper Gerard is the Liberal Democrats' new head of press

Apologies if I am late to the party, but I have not seen this reported anywhere in the media or the Lib Dem blogosphere.

The new Liberator reports that Jasper Gerard is the Liberal Democrats' new head of press. The magazine sources the news to an email to party staff by its communications director James Holt.

Gerard will be remembered as the party's candidate in Maidstone and the Weald at the last election. This is a historically safe Conservative seat, but Peter Carroll had got a good result there in 2010.

Because of that we convinced ourselves that Gerard stood a good chance of winning and funded his campaign accordingly. In the event he finished more than 10,000 votes adrift.

Jasper Gerard will also be remember as the author of a book with a spectacularly inaccurate title: The Clegg Coup: Britain's First Coalition Government Since Lloyd George.

Simon Titley reviewed it when it came out and was not impressed:

Gerard’s basic thesis is that the coalition government was the product of a carefully orchestrated ‘coup’ by Nick Clegg and his allies. But coalition was inevitable sooner or later. The two-party system reached its peak at the 1951 general election, when 97% of the electorate voted either Labour or Conservative. Since then, the two-party vote has slowly shrunk, reaching a post-war low of 65% in 2010. ... 

Gerard’s claim that the coalition was possible only because Clegg “had transformed his party and dragged it to the centre ground” simply doesn’t stand up. Indeed, the incompetence of the party’s general election campaign, the net loss of seats, and a popular vote share no better than 2005 (and lower than that won by the Alliance in 1983) suggest that coalition happened despite rather than because of Nick Clegg’s leadership. 

And the loss of Short money shows that the party was not as well prepared for coalition as Gerard claims.

Still, Gerard is an experienced journalist and I wish him well in his new job.

This item can be found in the Radical Bulletin section of Liberator. There you will also read of the internal tensions in the Young Liberals, how Nick Clegg turned down a favourable deal on party funding and of a hefty bill the party must pay before vacating Great George Street.

The moral is clear. You should subscribe to Liberator.

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Six of the Best 598

"His father was a foreign correspondent for The Times, and he was a great-grandson of civil engineer Sir Alexander Meadows Rendel, and a great-great-nephew of Liberal MP Stuart Rendel, the first Baron Rendel, a benefactor of William Gladstone." Paul Walter pays tribute to David Rendel, who has died aged 67.

Ferdinand Mount dissects the Brexiteers: "No one since Greta Garbo has said ‘I want to be alone’ with such feeling. Or perhaps it’s not so much Garbo as the chant sung by the fans of Millwall FC that I should be thinking of: ‘No one likes us, we don’t care.’ At the time of writing, Millwall are lying fourth in Football League One. For the uninitiated, this is really the Third Division."

Jeremy Corbyn is acting like the leader of a minor party and Nick Clegg acted like the leader of a major party, argues William Barter.

Memphis Barker says the next leader of the Greens should not be a water melon.

Lynne About Loughborough attended the commemoration of the centenary of the Zeppelin raid on the town.

The comma splice is becoming more common, Daniel McMahon will tell you why it is wrong.

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Why #PanamaLeaks may damage David Cameron and the Tories

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"I thought I was running for the leadership of the Conservative party, not some demented Marxist sect," fumed Douglas Hurd in 1990.

That was when he found his Etonian background being held against him in the Conservative leadership election that followed the defenestration of Margaret Thatcher.

Sure enough, he lost out to the Brixton boy John Major.

Fast forward to 2008 when, in admonishing Nick Clegg for an insensitive remark on pensions, I wrote:

Just because Tony Blair and David Cameron have made it look easy to be a public school type in modern Britain and not rub people up the wrong way does not mean that it is easy. Be yourself, Nick, but do be aware of the effect your attitude can have on other people.

Maybe things were changing by then, because in 2010 I observed:

Being "posh" was, until a year or two ago, just about the worst sin imaginable in British society. In as far as "posh" was used as a synonym for "educated" this was a pernicious development. 

It represented a foolish attempt to keep Labour's working-class roots, despite that fact that many of the people using this style of arguing were pretty posh themselves.

All this is a prologue to saying you should read John Rentoul on the Independent site:

The biggest setback of their first government, the cut in the top rate of income tax, damaged them because it trashed the rhetoric of being “all in it together” and reinforced the image of the Conservatives as the party of the rich. At the time, I wrote that, if Cameron lost the 2015 election, the 2012 Budget would have been when it happened. 

That is what makes Cameron’s victory last year all the more remarkable: that he won the grudging votes of people on low incomes who thought he had no idea what their lives were like and yet who still trusted him more than the leader of the people’s party. It is a tribute to Cameron’s skill that he could win with the handbrake of poshness on.

I have seen nothing that suggests anything illegal on the part of the Cameron family. And I suspect that the sort of people who might conceivably vote Conservative at the next election will tend to approve of doing all you can to pass your wealth on to your children.

But the Panama leaks affair may damage the Cameron and the Conservatives in two ways.

First, it reminds us just how damned rich he is. The WebCameron was and his talk of his "Dad" is an attempt to make him sound just like one more father of a middle-class family. The truth is different.

Second, it is a reminder that the idea you will be secure if you "work hard and do the right thing"is not true. You need to come from a family where two or three generations have worked hard and done the right thing - and enjoyed reasonable luck - to be secure. The Conservatives' emphasis on family breakdown in their definition of poverty recognised this truth.

I hope Cameron will ride out this storm: he represents our best chance of winning the referendum campaign and keeping Britain in the European Union.

But I suspect the Conservatives would be wise to choose a successor to him who has not been to Eton.

However, that decision is in the hands of Conservative members. They are not wise and they love Boris Johnson.

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"Only 1 per cent of new fathers are taking shared parental leave" WRONG

Story that 1% of new dads taking shared parental leave: nonesense. Survey asks employers for % of ALL male employees pic.twitter.com/I2J9foRDpO

— Sarah O'Connor (@sarahoconnor_) April 5, 2016

This morning's news was full of stories about the failure of Nick Clegg's pet policies when he was deputy prime minister: shared parental leave.

Here is an example from the Evening Standard:

Only 1 per cent of fathers have taken up the opportunity to share parental leave a year after the option was introduced, a survey of employers and parents has found. 

According to research by My Family Care - which advises businesses on being family-friendly - and the Women's Business Council, 55 per cent of women said they would not want to share their maternity leave. 

The survey of more than 1,000 parents and 200 businesses found that taking up shared parental leave ... was dependent on a person's individual circumstances, particularly on their financial situation and the paternity pay on offer from their employer.

But as the tweet above from Sarah O'Connor, employment correspondent for the Financial Times, shows, these stories were nonsense.

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Nick Clegg to hold public meeting in Harborough on 19 May

Nick Clegg will be speaking on Europe at a public meeting on Europe in Oadby on Thursday 19 May.

Also featuring Dinesh Dhamija, the founder of Ebookers, the meeting will take place at Beauchamp College with a 5.30pm for 6pm start.

My old friend Liberal Democrat councillor Phil Knowles says:

"Zuffar Haq and the team are working very hard to make this a successful evening and I have no doubt that tickets will be in high demand. My recommendation is to book early to secure your place at the event and to avoid disappointment.''

To book a place at the meeting, please email Linda Broadley.

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Liberator on the Gurling review

My copy of the new Liberator arrived this morning. I have already started serialising Lord Bonkers' latest diary, but I thought I would share some of Radical Bulletin with you too.

The lead item looks at the Gurling review of the Liberal Democrats' performance at the 2015 general election:

James Gurling and his colleagues have pulled few punches. If their report has a weakness it's that it all too well reflects the general election campaign's fundamental mistake of seeing political problems and offering organisational solutions ... 

The elephant in the room throughout ... is Nick Clegg himself, Its conclusions painfully reinforce the now clearer view that he lacked the political experience for the job having had one term as an MEP - so semi-detatched from UK politics - and only two years as an MP before becoming leader, in both cases parachuted into safe berths.

I am sure you would like to read more, but to do so you will have to subscribe to Liberator.

Radical Bulletin, incidentally, was originally a separate publication, latterly edited by John Tilley and Ralph Bancroft.

It merged with Liberator in the early 1980s, where it survives to this day as a section of the magazine.

Think of the two publications as the radical Liberal equivalent of Whizzer and Chips.

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Six of the Best 579

"Why is it that when Conference supports the leadership it’s binding and an act of disrespect to rebel, but when Conference disagrees with them its word is provisional, borderline advisory?" Graham Cowie on the Scottish Liberal Democrats' row over fracking.

Richard Kemp proposes a radical shake up of the way Liverpool is run.

Nick Clegg and the dogging site - a first post from Ben Rathe that went viral.

Northern Soul presents a striking piece of local history: "In 1859 the body of a man by the name of Harry Stokes washed up in the River Irwell. Upon examination, it was discovered that twice-married Stokes was biologically female and had been successfully living the life of a Victorian man in Manchester."

"The thrill of the aerial running shot and the suddenness of the ending mean that this, rather than The 400 Blows, is the film that leaves the viewer breathless. Even writing about it makes me shiver." Somewhere Boy has been to see Andrei Tarkovsky's first feature-length film, Ivan's Childhood.

A Clerk of Oxford visits Ramsey Abbey in the Fens.

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Income inequality was unchanged over the Coalition years

John Rentoul eats humble pie in the Independent:

Nick Clegg: an apology. I may have given the impression that the Liberal Democrats were a waste of space, and their crushing in the general election was a merited humiliation. Statements such as “Clegg was a fool to have gone into coalition with the Tories” and “the Lib Dems got nothing in return for ministerial posts that David Cameron didn’t want to give them” may have led the reader to believe I thought the whole business a diversion and the resumption of single-party government a welcome simplification. 

If so, there has been a misunderstanding. I now realise, reading Clegg’s interview with The Independent’s Andrew Grice last week, that I agree with Nick. 

For all the overheated language from the left about inequality, the record of the Coalition was surprisingly good. New figures from the Office for National Statistics last week confirmed that income inequality was unchanged in the 2010-15 period. This is something of an achievement at a time when the Government was cutting public spending, and Clegg is justified in claiming to have tried to balance the books “in the fairest possible way”.

It's good that we are starting to read views like this, but there is a need to enter a couple of qualifications.

First, income inequality tends to decline when the economy is doing badly and to increase when it is doing well and employers have to compete for skilled labour.

Second, as I once blogged, the Lib Dems won't flourish in 2020 by blaming the voters for 2015.

What these figures do show is how dishonest the Labour Party was throughout the Coalition years.

But that dishonesty did not just harm the Liberal Democrats: it harmed Labour too.

It encouraged a mind-set under which Labour and other left-wing activists spoke only to themselves, became increasingly outraged and steadily distanced themselves from the sort of voters they need to win over.

The natural outcome of that process was their choice of a leader who appealed to them and few others people.

Step forward Jeremy Corbyn.

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Vince Cable looks back on the tuition fees debacle

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Vince Cable spoke to Times Higher Education this week after taking up an honorary professorship at the University of Nottingham.

Asked about the Coalition decision to increase tuition fees, he said:

"It was politically very traumatic, but it was actually good policy. One of my colleagues, I think, came up with the phrase that we got 8 out of 10 for the policy but 2 out of 10 for the politics.

"The problem was that we made this pledge about not increasing student tuition fees – it was disastrous, it was not deliverable. ... 

"We got hammered for it – loss of trust, all those things. But it wasn’t deliverable in the financial climate of the coalition. 

"My job was to try to make the best of a bad job and produce a system which was genuinely progressive. It is. Nobody pays fees; they pay a form of graduate tax when they leave, depending on their income. 

"The universities as a consequence are now quite well funded, unlike most other bits of what you could broadly call the public sector."

You can see the heart of the Liberal Democrats' problem in the photo above - and I don't mean Nick Clegg.

We pledged to vote against any increase in tuition fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative,

As was pointed out (I think by Polly McKenzie) in the debate I posted the other day, this took it for granted that we would not be in government after the 2010 general election.

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Lord Bonkers' Diary: Cooking hedgehogs for Nick Clegg

Could it be that Lord Bonkers knew Malcolm Saville?

Cooking hedgehogs for Nick Clegg

One does not have memories of last year’s general election campaign so much as flashbacks, but I do recall visiting a hedgehog sanctuary with poor Clegg and Paddy Ashplant. While Clegg was being shown how the inmates are cared for and educated, Ashplant took me to one side and confessed that he used to eat the creatures when he was in the Special Boat Service.

 Having invited Clegg to dinner this evening, I hit upon the happy idea of reminding him of those days by serving hedgehog. Cook is not keen – “nasty, flea-ridden things that don’t belong in a Christian kitchen” – and claims not to know how to manage “all they prickles,” so I enlist the help of the Elves of Rockingham Forest, who quite charm her. They tell us that the trick is to bake the beasts in clay so that when they are done to a turn you simply break the clay open and then peel it and the spines clean off. The Elves also agree to catch the hedgehogs for us using high elven magic (or possibly Pedigree Chum).

I have no doubt that the evening will prove a success and that our hedgehog recipe will appear in the next Liberal Democrat Cookbook alongside Pressed Tonge and Norman Lamb Hotpot.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary

A shadow cabinet maker

Giving Isis one up the snoot

Andrew Neil's press gang

Corbyn sends for Christopher Robin Milne

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How Nick Clegg was nearly toppled in 2014

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The new Liberator is out, which means a limited amount of copy from it is available on the magazine's website.

From there you can download a PDF of an article by Seth Thévoz - "A Very Nearly Successful Coup."

It tells the story of the attempt to topple Nick Clegg as Liberal Democrat leader and argues that it came far nearer to succeeding that was generally realised at the time:

What destroyed the coup was when the second wave of MPs got ‘the wobbles’. A disciplined media grid had set out a detailed timetable of MPs who would go public in waves of two or three at a time, staggered with other parliamentarians, to build a sense of momentum. 

On day one, a members’-led open letter calling on Clegg to resign was released as per the plan. (This was never a petition as claimed – it was an open letter which envisioned 20 signatures. It accidentally secured over 400.) 

On day two, the first two MPs went ‘over the top’, publicly calling for Clegg’s resignation, and were joined by a third MP who wasn’t scheduled to declare until several days later, jumping the gun.

Then on day three, we were badly let down by one MP. The response of his colleagues was “If he’s not going, I’m out” – which spread like a chain reaction among MPs and peers. The activists roped in to do the MPs’ dirty work were left holding the baby.

The moral is clear. If you want to know what is going on in the Liberal Democrats you should subscribe to Liberator.

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Where is the Liberal Democrat equivalent of the Beckett Report?

Margaret Beckett's report on what she believes to be the reasons for its defeat in last year's general election has been published by the Labour Party. BBC News has a summary.

There is an article about it on Liberal Democrat Voice, which gives in passing a dispiriting glimpse of the tactics we used to hold on to Sheffield Hallam.

It also has a noteworthy comment from Liberator's Mark Smulian:

At least Labour has published its report. I understand the equivalent Lib Dem one was released only to Federal Executive members on paper, which they were obliged to return at the end of their meeting, and has otherwise remained secret.

Let's hope the Lib Dem equivalent of the Beckett Report will be published soon.

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Nick Clegg has lost an empire and not yet found a role

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Dean Atcheson famously said that Britain had lost an empire and not yet found a role. The same problem seems to be afflicting Nick Clegg.

Earlier this week the Telegraph reported:

Nick Clegg has the worst voting record in the House of Commons, according to new parliamentary analysis looking at MP turnout since the general election. 

The former deputy prime minister has failed to cast a vote in almost 90 per cent of all divisions called in the Commons since May 7.

The case for the defence, as made by "Mr Clegg's spokesman, runs

"Nick Clegg has taken part every time he felt it was possible that his vote could make a difference to the outcome, such as the crucial vote on military action in Syria. 

"Otherwise, he has devoted his time to serving his constituents in Sheffield Hallam and to issues that he cares deeply about, including social mobility, drugs reform and Britain's place in Europe. 

"The first six months after a general election are untypical and Nick expects his voting record to improve in the months ahead."

A spirited attempt, but can you imagine what the local Liberal Democrats would be saying about a Conservative or Labour MP with such a voting record?

Last year's general election results must have been a terrible shock to Nick, but then it was to many other people Lib Dems who have had to get on with their jobs since.

Nick needs to find his mojo and find it soon. He should not be providing easy ammunition for the likes of Peter Bone. He is better than that.

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Remembering Brian Niblett

I was very sorry to learn of the death of Brian Niblett from the excellent obituary on Liberal Democrat Voice.

My chief memory of Brian is of an afternoon I spent driving around rural Leicestershire with him and his wife.

I was helping them find some of the more obscure addresses of Liberal Democrat members so they could deliver Brian's campaign literature as he strove to be first on our East Midlands list for the 1999 Euro elections.

As Lib Dem Voice says, he was the early frontrunner in that contest. But he was to be overtaken by a smooth young Eurocrat called Nick Clegg.

If Nick had not been first on the East Midlands list he would not have got into the European parliament. That, in turn, would have made it much harder for him to inherit Sheffield Hallam from Richard Allan.

On such things do the history of political parties turn.

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Paddy Ashdown, Malcolm Saville and eating hedgehogs

Today in someone's review of the year I came across an interview Nick Clegg gave to the Evening Standard on the eve of the general election:

Looking back at the campaign, it is the comic moments he remembers. For instance, his first visit was to a hedgehog sanctuary, with Paddy Ashdown. Ashdown muttered under his breath to Clegg: “When I was in the Special Boat Service we used to eat hedgehogs.”

Talk of eating hedgehogs inevitably reminds those of us who grew up on Malcolm Saville of his second Lone Pine story Seven White Gates.

At the beginning of the book Peter (Petronella) Sterling is cycling to her mysterious uncle' farm under the Stiperstones.

On the way she comes across a Gypsy caravan whose horse is running away with the little girl driving it (Fenella) after being frightened by a tank (the book was published in 1944). Peter risks her life to bring the horse under control.

Later she eats with the Gypsy family:

Peter stood by and watched the other gipsies rake away the hot embers of their wood fire, until two cylinders of baked clay were exposed. Fenella ran for a dish from the Reubens' van and one of the glowing cylinders was poked on to it. Then, with mutual expressions of good will, the cooks and the Reubens with their guest parted. 

Round their own fire, Peter watched how the baked clay was cracked and peeled off, bringing with it the spines of the hedgehog and leaving him bare but beautifully cooked. From the pot came a stew of gravy and vegetables, a generous helping of which was piled on to the plate of the guest of honour.

She didn't see how Reuben divided up the hedgehog, but her share was certainly tasty - something between rabbit and chicken - and she was so hungry that she finished her plateful almost as soon as Fenella.

I don't know if that is how they cooked hedgehog in the SAS. And, though this method would deal neatly with the spines, Saville does not mention what has happened to the giblets.

As to the taste of hedgehog I am reminded of Jonathan Meades' comment:

People say frogs' legs taste of chicken. They are wrong. They taste of frog.

Read more on Malcolm Saville and Gypsies.

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Liberal Democrat MPs to back air strikes against Isil in Syria

Former Deputy Prime Minister @Nick_Clegg: sets out why @LibDems think UK should be part of multilateral airstrikes: https://t.co/DBowrFAPXr.

— Darren McCaffrey (@DMcCaffreySKY) December 1, 2015

It is a horribly difficult decision, but I think this is the right call. And I am pleased that all eight (count 'em of our MPs will be voting the same way.

Nick Clegg explained some of the thinking behind this decision in an interview with the Yorkshire Post today.

I wonder if his prominence today reflects an acceptance that he should have accepted the foreign affairs post he was offered when Tim Farron became leader?

Anyway, this is what he said:

"I'm minded to support the extension. Not really because of the military argument because just as much as opponents exaggerate the risks, we are already in a war with Isil. We are already chucking bombs at them and I think people slightly exaggerate what a step it is when they criticise it." 

"Equally I think people who overstate what will be gained militarily are also overstating their case. The idea that extra British bombs will militarily change the dynamic completely is stretching credibility. 

"I just don't think anyone should overstate the case for or against. We are already at war, we are already dropping bombs from 30,000 feet, we are already conducting surveillance missions over Syria, they are already attacking us, they've already murdered Brits on the beaches of Tunisia. It's already highly likely there's going to be an attack on British soil at some point." 

He said France's request for help from the RAF had been a key moment in helping him make up his mind. 

"[France] are an incredibly important ally of ours. If that had happened in London and we asked the French, I think we would want the French to try and help us out as one of our closest, nearest neighbours," he said.

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Nick Clegg in Oldham

Up for the by-election, Nick Clegg has been interviewed by the Oldham Evening Chronicle:

“I think Jane’s getting a really positive response on the doorstep and I am very confident that she is going to do a lot better than we did in the General Election. 

“We have got to rebuild like any party, like any individual that takes a hard knock. You have got to lick your wounds a bit but move on and dust yourself down. 

“The party’s finding its zeal and fighting spirit again. In a constituency like this where we haven’t traditionally been competing at Westminster level we still have scores and scores of activists coming into our HQ and knocking on people’s doors."

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