| Ming pulls it off |
[Jun. 9th, 2006|12:44 am] |
It's a funny old world when the replacement of a media-conscious young leader with a silver-haired patrician is the cue for the first ever free-for-all interview between a party leader and a bunch of bloggers. Admittedly, we were Lib Dem bloggers and therefore house trained, but our 45-minute session today with Sir Menzies Campbell explicitly had no preconditions attached, no advance notice of questions, no no-go areas, and no requirement for copy approval afterwards. Is this the future? I'd like to think so.
To deal with the important stuff first, Ming has a genuine petrol-head's love of talking about car engines, will be supporting England in the World Cup, accepts that Pete will probably win Big Brother, and has strong opinions on Doctor Who (which I'll let Will Howells write about as they are his scoop). I didn't ask about his ties.
There was also a lot of other stuff about cutting income tax, penalising environmental polluters, reducing the number of MPs and breaking up the Home Office to make it operate better. Stuff like that.
And I have this to report: Ming has a spring in his step and he's looking and sounding sharp.
The thing that has worried me in the past - and I've alluded to it from time to time here - is that he seemed to be carrying his years badly. He sounded frail, looked pale, and at times seemed slack-jawed and confused.
Not any more.
Today's speech was billed as his vision for the future of the party. Unkinder souls called it a relaunch after an initial tenure as leader that had been somewhat underwhelming. It could have gone either way - the ghost of Iain Duncan Smith could easily have stalked Millbank - but in fact it went well. Better than well, actually. The relief on the face of Nick Clegg as he congratulated him afterwards was palpable, while Jo Swinson - who looks so young in the flesh that she should surely be presenting Why Don't You? rather than representing East Dunbartonshire in the House of Commons - looked on him as one would a favourite grandfather who's just outsprinted all the dads in a parents' race at a school sports day.
The Atrium at 4 Millbank is an excellent location to make an announcement - I have argued before that because Ming looks traditional he should choose modern settings - but its acoustics are dire. It was difficult to follow everything he said, but that was OK because he was actually saying it mostly for TV and they'd made the proper arrangements. The speech touched all the right buttons, speaking of the greater professionalism he's introducing to the party's workings and of the policy areas he considers the most important.
It ended with a rallying cry:
"I want a Britain where opportunity is the birth right of every child, a Britain where ambition is nurtured and aspiration encouraged.
"I was asked by one of my friends today, what I want for my country. I want what every Liberal Democrat wants: freedom, opportunity and compassion.
"I want a liberal country.
"I want a Britain to be proud of."
That provoked a frenzy of nods from all the MPs standing on the platform with him - only Vince Cable and Saj Karim MEP refrained. Previously, while he was speaking, the cluster of senior colleagues around him had all practiced their best "listening seriously" faces, with Swinson and Ed Davey winning by miles. Each, as their own policy area came up in the speech, nodded on cue - Michael Moore with a slight look of puzzlement, as if he'd just been airlifted from the Big Brother house and wasn't quite sure why he was there, Chris Huhne emphatically, as if he was checking off the points to make sure he approved.
As Ming left, the acoustics of the Atrium started to work in his favour. The applause was loud and genuine - but the vast chamber magnified it and as he walked up the long sweep of steps to leave, pausing to shake hands and wave, the sound seemed to carry him upwards. One Lib Dem staffer later reported hearing a woman's breathless voice saying "I touched him! I shook his hand!" Most people stopped short of that level of adoration (no-one threw underwear) but spirits were clearly high. The event had succeeded.
Media reaction has so far also been broadly positive. It's hardly headline news on the day when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi died and Wayne Rooney's foot was reborn, but it's had an encouraging response and the proposed cut in income tax has been picked up as a story. The Beeb's Nick Robinson stood at the back looking thoughtful as Ming spoke, occasionally sipping from a tall glass and checking the pre-supplied text of Campbell's speech with the words he actually delivered. His blog has nothing to say about the event.
Unlike this one, and the Apollo Blog, and Will Howells. The future, you see, unfolding in front of you.
A second post, with the actual interview, will follow soon. The full text of the speech is here. |
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| The Mingterview, part one |
[Jun. 9th, 2006|02:05 am] |
If you need any better illustration of the promising effect of Thursday's Lib Dem announcements, it's the way it's suddenly open season on the party on certain right-of-centre blogs, such as Guido (no less than three knocking posts in quick succession) and Iain Dale (the rather comical assertion that the announcements represent the most left wing agenda since Michael Foot - they really ought to get their stories straight, as Guido is calling it Thatcherite).
But obviously, I would say that, wouldn't I, as a Lib Dem?
The question of impartiality has been vexing me rather, since someone whose opinions I respect greatly looked at my last post and said it sounded like it had been written by the party press office. I'm not convinced it does, and it's an accurate record of my opinions, but even so.
I'm not a journalist any more, so I'm not obliged to be impartial. But I'm not a politican these days, either, and have no need to push a particular line - the only obligations I have remaining are to be honest in what I write and to apply a little critical intelligence.
 It's with that in mind that I come to write up the interview that I and two other Lib Dem bloggers, Peter from the Apollo Blog and Will Howells, had with Ming Campbell earlier.
I'd been a critical supporter of Ming in the leadership contest, grown increasingly worried over the months that followed by the ease with which he was undermined by the opposition, but greatly reassured by his performance a couple of hours earlier as he made his big speech. I wasn't in a mood for Paxmaning him, as I might have been if he'd fluffed the speech, but I had some questions I badly wanted to know the answers to. I also had a couple supplied by members of my local party, and they weren't exactly simple either.
I won't dwell too much on what Will and Peter asked, as they have both supplied excellent write-ups in their respective blogs. My own agenda was largely about campaigning prospects and techniques rather than about policy.
The leadershipWill kicked things off with the obvious question - how would Ming characterise the first 100 days of his leadership? The answer was simple: "Challenging." He elaborated by explaining how he'd been pitched straight into a party conference and a local election campaign, with no meaningful handover period, and only now was he able to settle down and get organised. Some the transitions had been difficult, not least getting used to Prime Minister's Questions, where he was likely to have almost 600 MPs actively opposing him. This was an unpleasant contrast with questions to the Foreign Secretary when he was deputy leader and shadowing that brief - in that role, he usually had half the House on his side as he bashed the other lot.
I asked one of the points I made on this blog last Wednesday after his success in PMQs - did he think he'd been successful that day because he'd picked a subject that was considered to be one of his specialist subjects and strengths? He agreed, emphatically, and explained that it was always difficult to plan a killer question on a hot topic because there was real chance that someone would ask it before it was his turn. On Iraq, though, he knew he was on safe ground - the Tories wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.
CommunicatingIt's one of my hobby-horses that we communicate well with educated types who read the Independent and have degrees, but not at all well with the huddled masses. What, I asked, were we going to do to change that?
I wasn't wholly convinced by the reply, though part of it was very good. The less-good part was a rallying cry to repeat the successes achieved on local councils in Liverpool and Newcastle at a Westminster level in the great northern cities - a very fine aim, but lacking in detail as to how it might be achieved. He floated the need to communicate with more people over the internet, before correcting himself that we were probably talking about a lot of socially excluded people with a lower-than-average online prescence. Then he hit his stride talking about crime.
He'd already gone into some detail about the need for a robust but liberal approach to crime when answering one of Peter's questions. Now he returned to it and linked it explicitly to the question of how to talk to the socially excluded, the people with no stake in politics and precious little in society.
He said: "The people on the council estates are the ones whose houses get broken into and have to dodge flying bottles on Saturday night or who have neighbours from hell." I'd been deeply suspicious of many of the details of his recent law and order announcement, at the same time as welcoming the fact he was speaking out on this issue. I remain suspicious, but am reassured to find there's more to it than knee-jerk right-wing populism. Crime is a powerful issue for connecting with people who don't want to be connected with.
And now it's pushing 2am and I need to sleep. The rest of this interview will have to wait. But as a teaser, I leave this quote from Campbell about his opposite number in the Tories: "He makes a speech a day about bugger all - did you hear the last one? About happiness? It was like listening to Ken Dodd, all he needed was a tickling stick." |
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