WTO terms

It is not fashionable in Liberal Democrat circles to quote Christopher Huhne, especially not in the context of The Orange Book, but I was struck by a couple of paragraphs in his contribution to the compilation by Paul Marshall and David Laws. Note that this was published in 2004, before there was a real threat to our membership of the EU and even before the transatlantic credit crunch of 2007/8.

He writes that "trade liberalisation has been one of the great post-war successes, and has been rewarded with greater imports and exports than ever before. However, there has been much concern that the legal framework for liberalisation - the World Trade Organisation's dispute procedures - militates against developing countries. This is mainly because of their relative lack of access to the official and legal back-up that the developed countries can muster". One could add that the smaller the developed country, the more disproportionate is the cost of that back-up. This is something we will have to provide ourselves from tomorrow onwards, instead of being able to rely on the collective expertise of the EU. Of course, in those happy days of the GW Bush presidency, nobody foresaw that a future US administration would kibosh the WTO dispute procedures altogether by blocking appointements to its appeals panel.

(Huhne closes his article with a warning against nations closing themselves off from the world marketplace, citing the fates of Libya and the former Soviet Union as warnings. Trump's protectionism has not yet gone that far in practice, but his rhetoric has.)

In a letter to the FT in December 2018, Huhne demolishes an argument by Priti Patel in favour of trade on World Trade Organization terms on the grounds that “this option would make the UK economy substantially less open to competition, erecting barriers to nearly half of our trade”. He also points out that regulatory standards and other non-tariff measures are now greater barriers to trade than tariffs alone. He asserts that if “a country wants to set its own regulatory standards, rather than share the process of doing so as we do in the EU, it will inevitably impose border costs as each side checks compliance. In the short term, that process will cause chaos at pinch points such as Dover-Calais through which so much of our fresh food is imported. In the long term, it will make Britain a less competitive marketplace, and will exact a heavy economic cost".

Sadly, it looks as if Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings are as likely to listen to experts like Huhne and Laws as Cameron and Osborne were. 2021 could be a grim year.

Nicholas Parsons

I am glad that the obituaries mention his life-long support for the Liberal party, and thereafter the Liberal Democrats. This extended to not only appearing on the likes of Any Questions? up until the early years of this century, but also sponsoring Liberal Democrat events, including hustings at election times. Sometimes he was criticised by younger members for some out-of-date social attitudes as expressed on those discussion programmes, but he should be praised for putting his head above the parapet when few other celebrity supporters were willing to do so.

He was also ready to go into print, as in this interview in the Indy before the ground-breaking 1997 general election:

Election '97 : HOW I WILL VOTE: NICHOLAS PARSONS

'Ashdown has been very fair in not entering this slanging match'

• Friday 18 April 1997 00:02 

How will you vote?

Liberal Democrat

Why?

Well, I've been a Liberal all my life, since my university days. I've stuck throughout my life to the Liberal cause and Liberal party and now am a Liberal Democrat.

I think that Paddy Ashdown and the leading liberals [are] the most straightforward and honest of all the politicians. They're not engaging in the party political slanging match that's going on, and trying to go into a personality tirade against each other.

What issues are important to you?

I think the most important thing is education. I was rector of St Andrews University for three years, and I became very involved in the academic and educational world. I recognise the value of education and that's why I admire very much Paddy Ashdown's pledge to put a penny on income tax in order to make sure that the educational standards are improved. I think every young person should be given all available opportunities, and I'm sure every parent would agree to put a penny on their income tax without hesitation to safeguard their children's future. I think it's sad that the other parties don't adopt similar attitudes, and instead try to bribe the electorate into voting for them.

I feel very strongly about the unfair voting system in this country. In the past the Liberal party have polled almost a third of the total votes, yet won less than a sixtieth of the available seats. On the other hand the Tory party actually polled only 43 per cent of the votes at the last election, and yet because they got a few more seats they were able to form a government. This allowed them to push through their agenda arbitrarily.

This is not the way that a democracy should work. The advantage of a third party, especially a liberal party in third place, is that it would act as a counterbalance to one of the two major parties who have been fighting it back and forth over the last 40 years. Proportional representation is the fairest way to count votes.

Which politicians do you admire?

Well at the moment I like the leading members of the Liberal Democrats. I think that Paddy Ashdown has been very fair and intelligent, in the way he has not gone in for this political slanging match. There are some very bright people in the Lib Dems, such as Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell. If there was a close finish or hung parliament, I would like to see the Liberal Democrats invited into a coalition. This would ensure the extreme policies of either party were modified and we would have consensus politics. Coalitions can work.

When did you first become interested in politics?

I was secretary of the Liberal Party at Glasgow University for three years, and took part in the debates which we used to have there. University is when most people get actively interested in politics. At Glasgow we put on parliamentary debates based on the parliamentary system. It was often outrageous and great fun as well as being very stimulating.

Interview by Sam Coates

The rottweilers are safe

Extending Peter Black's metaphor, so are the lapdogs, but guide dogs, sniffer dogs and St Bernards are for the chop. Although politicians routinely deprecate such programmes as Today and the Andrew Marr Show, and complain that the likes of Marr and Kuenssberg are biased, they really love the exposure such shows give them. What they do not like are the journalistic exposes which Newsnight and Panorama often do well. Nor do they believe the Great British Public needs detailed independent news coverage - media releases from their parties' PR departments provide all they need. So there will be muted complaints from Westminster about the BBC's latest rounds of cuts.

Teletext reprieve

It seems that I was not the only old viewer to miss Teletext. In response to representation, the close-down scheduled for Friday has been put off, at least until a review in the spring.

Overtaken by events

From the Introduction to Gimson's Prime Ministers (publ. 2018, thereby stopping at Theresa May):

"There are very few complete duds in this book, for the Commons can detect a dud as soon as he or she begins to speak. For the same reason, it is virtually impossible for a criminal, or a demagogue, to become prime minister. Someone like Donald Trump could not get to 10 Downing Street."

Centenaries I missed

Two noble experiments:

On January 13th 1920, with the ratification in Paris of the post-Great War Peace Treaty, the League of Nations came formally into existence. The new organisation was early under pressure from Kurdish nationalists who, supported by President Wilson, desired a separate state. The League eventually yielded to British commercial interests and fear of Russian expansion to deny the Kurds. The League's end came when its ineffectiveness was demonstrated in 1935 by the invasion of one member nation, Abyssinia (Ethiopia), by another, Italy.

The Volstead Act, formally the National Prohibition Act of 1919, came into effect in the United States on January 20th, 1920. Prohibition did not last as long as the League, the eighteenth amendment to the US constitution being formally overturned by the twenty-first on 5th December 1933.

No wonder our prisons are overflowing

The i newspaper reports today:

A man has been warned he faces jail after faking a membership card for Lord's Cricket Ground which gave him access to the best seats. [The offender] was told by district judge Angus Hamilton at Hendon Magistrates' Court that his crime warranted a custodial penalty.

If ever there was a case for community service rather than incarceration, this was it. Cleaning the Lord's toilets for a fortnight, without a chance to view the cricket, would seem to be an appropriate punishment.

However, one does wonder if faking a pass to a box at the Emirates Stadium would have attracted the same opprobrium from this particular district judge.

Broadening the scope of words

Terry Jones' death from a cruel disease was expected, but sad nevertheless. After it had sunk in, and I had heard the tributes from writing partners Michael Palin and John Cleese, it occurred to me that a man with such wide-ranging interests must have featured on Desert Island Discs and Private Passions. Strangely, Michael Berkeley missed him, but Roy Plomley cast him away while the Python team was just still active. (The programme is available from the BBC archive, by the way.) 

Jones's choice of discs struck me as eclectic and I was just about to post a message on Facebook to that effect when I thought I had better check that the word was correct. The first dictionary which came to hand was a legacy Nuttall's from the 1890s, where the definition given for the adjective was: "Selecting; choosing out and adopting from the views of others what seems good" - rather narrower than what I had in mind, but clearly in line with modern usage. But the entry then defined the noun eclectic even more narrowly, as "a philosopher who selects from various systems such opinions and principles as he judges to be sound and rational; originally one who, having no system of his own, selected from Plato and Aristotle." 

One thing led to another. I believe I may have inveighed before against the use of "refute" instead of "rebut" or "deny". Sure enough, Nuttall gives only one definition: "to prove to be false or wrong". It still has only that meaning in the realms of chess and mathematics, but, thanks largely to politicians, it has become so weakened, that the secondary usage now turns up in today's dictionaries, e.g. Collins'.

And don't get me started on "absoutely" ...

Civil Service still in a state of upheaval

The Institute for Government's 2020 Whitehall Monitor points to continuing weaknesses in the UK civil service.

Civil service staff numbers have risen as the government prepares for Brexit. They have increased in every quarter since the 2016 EU referendum, with the number working specifically on Brexit estimated to have tripled since 2018. These new recruits are changing the shape of the civil service: there are more people in senior roles and in London; the percentage of civil servants aged under 30 is increasing as the 2010 recruitment freezes thaw; diversity is improving, although female, minority ethnic and disabled civil servants remain under-represented in senior roles.

But perennial issues remain – and these have been given greater emphasis at the start of 2020 with figures including the prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, and one of the authors of the Conservative election manifesto, Rachel Wolf, writing about the future of government. Both have touched on the high turnover of civil servants, so disruptive to the delivery of policies and projects and to institutional memory, and so costly – £74 million in recruitment and lost productivity.

The latest figures show that turnover remains a problem – it has increased in five departments over the past year. Senior civil service turnover is particularly damaging – senior civil servants move roles, on average, less than every two years. This is especially true for Brexit-related roles: more than 10 senior civil servants in charge of key aspects of Brexit, including permanent secretaries, changed roles in 2019.

If government wants to tackle the problems of high turnover, it will need – as the Institute for Government has recommended – to reform pay, promotion, rules on internal competition for jobs and its human resources policies generally. It also needs better data to understand and fix the problem.

Misjudgements by USA in Iraq and Iran

Towards the end of the segment about Iran on today's Listening Post, it was revealed that the Americans had released a propaganda video aiming to take advantage of the current unrest in Iran. Its theme was that life was better under the Shah. As the commentator remarked, people's memories are not that short. There is a reminder here of the 1953 suppression of Iranian democracy by Macmillan and Eisenhower,  and of previous foreign interventions. Incidentally, although President Obama apologised for America's part in that coup, no British government has done so.

For the USA to assassinate an Iranian official on Iraq's supposedly sovereign territory in a blaze of publicity is being read as a humiliating show of American dominance and of Iraqi government ineffectiveness. It is not only the Shia in Iraq but also the Sunni who are now demonstrating against the presence of US forces, and US influence generally, in Iraq. Having identified Soleimani some time ago as the master-mind behind Iran's client militias abroad, one wonders why the US did not adopt the same sanctions policy against him as they are now employing against eight other named officials, rather than blatantly breaching international law.

Besides, according to old Iraq hand Patrick Cockburn in the i newspaper at the weekend, Soleiman's and Khomenei's policies in the Middle East had become counterproductive.

Nobody watches the changing political winds in Tehran as closely as Iraqis, whose country is where the US-Iran struggle is being fought out. 

"Iraq is in a critical position," says an Iraqi Shia politician in Baghdad quoted in Middle East Eye. "The policy that Khomenei pursued in managing the region is no longer successful. The Iranian Revolutionary Guar contributed to creating problems in Iraq that turned into a burden for Iran and became an obstacle to its negotiations with the US."

The US however is handicapped by its view of Shia as a monolith, whereas the Shia communities in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon have separate overriding concerns. Besides,

in Middle Eastern politics, everybody tends to overplay their hand at one time or another, usually when they come to overconfidently believe that they can put their opponent permanently out of business. The US has repeatedly fallen into this trap in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria - and it is all too likely to do the same in its confrontation with Iran, which will remain a dangerous stalemate at risk of tipping into war. 

Be careful what you wish for

America's policy on external trade will be important to us as we are cast adrift on the world economic ocean with only sketchy charts. There seems to be a general impression on social media that things will improve if there is a change of US president. However, the Democrats have for a long time been regarded as the more protectionist of the two big parties in the States. Trump's populist moves against China and the EU (including Scotland and Wales) are an aberration in Republican history.

Indeed, the Democrat contenders for the presidency seem to be at one in criticising Trump for not being more successful in his tariff policy. Now, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate has attacked the president for backing down over the renminmbi/dollar exchange rate.

This is not an argument for rolling over to Trump in any trade negotiations. However, it is a warning that we should not expect a softer line from the US if there is a change of administration. We should also be prepared to walk away if any deal would compromise our standards.

Robert Maclennan

He always seemed to me to be a natural Liberal, in spite of his route through Labour to reach the SDP. That impression has been reinforced by a personal tribute by long-term friend Andrew Page.

Current party leaders in the Commons and Lords have also responded: http://aberavonneathlibdems.blogspot.com/2020/01/lib-dems-pay-tribute-to-lord-robert.html

I shall remember him best for the part he played before the 1997 general election in establishing a common platform of reform with Labour. He was the Lib Dems' representative in talks with Labour's forward-thinking, but by many accounts prickly, Robin Cook. It was the perfect combination to produce an agreement which Paddy Ashdown and Tony Blair signed up to. In those heady days, we realised that the Conservatives were going to lose but the received wisdom was that Labour would have no more than a narrow majority. There were dreams of human rights legislation, electoral reform, House of Lords reform and a more positive attitude towards the EU. In the event, Labour had a landslide, did not need support - even moral - from the Lib Dems and only the Human Rights Act survived.

That image of the young Maclennan being impressed by the statue of Campbell-Bannerman will stay with me for a while. Where are the Maclennans of today and, more importantly, where are their rôle models?

Televising his honour's sentencing remarks

The Secret Barrister lays out his objections to the Ministry of Justice's proposals. Most are those of an insider, things that a lay person would not have thought of, but I was gratified to see that he also echoes my first reaction to them:

We already see with regularity fully-explained sentencing remarks divorced from their context, misquoted or distorted by lazy reporters and special interest groups, and judges unfairly monstered as a consequence. The ability of anyone so inclined – from bad-faith editor to Twitter troll – to clip decontextualised video footage and circulate it virally to make a dishonest point about ‘soft sentencing’ or ‘loony judges’ is a modern reality.

It is the misuse of clips from parliamentary debate which reinforced my misgivings on this, but the SB makes a more subtle point and it is worth reading the whole piece when you have time to do so.

Back to basics

It is good to see that my party has not succumbed to the temptation to quetsch about Brexit in our response to the PM's programme as laid out in the Queen's Speech. We need to reassert our real reason for existence after a poor presidential-style election campaign, unsuited to the then leader.

Our constitution begins: "The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity." Sadly, for the latter part of the coalition, our then leadership took its eye off the first of those enslavements and belated attempts by the rest of the parliamentary party to redress the balance were thwarted by the Tories. Our support for membership of the European Union flowed from those basic principles and from our internationalist outlook - something else we need to reassert in the face of a prime minister who is determined to pander to the ignorant flag-waving segment of his party.

Cardiff congestion charge

We should give a grudging welcome to Cardiff City's plans to tackle road traffic congestion in the city centre while regretting that the programme was not started earlier. Pollution is only going to get worse during the four years before the charge is due to be brought in. It is a pity that earlier proposals to tackle air pollution specifically were dropped. I would like to see the council encouraging the take-up of electric vehicles by announcing in advance that non-polluting cars and vans will be exempt from the charge.

It would help if the Westminster government would revive the coalition's programme of electrifying the Great Western main line west of Cardiff. By this means, trains at Cardiff Central need not start their diesel engines when they are at their most polluting.

Priorities

It seems that in business circles, the annual pronouncements of Larry Fink are awaited as eagerly as those of Warren Buffett. His company, BlackRock, does not have the best of reputations here, but as the world's largest asset manager, its chairman needs to be listened to. His 2020 view is that future investment needs to be aimed at those combating climate change.

It is regrettable therefore that leading Brexiteers like Nigel Farage and Mark François are expending their energies in planning events designed to do nothing more positive than rub the noses of the losing side in the Brexit election of December in their defeat. We should expect our elected representatives to concentrate their efforts on charting the UK's way forward in our exposed economic future.

Taking our cue from Mr Fink, what is being done to encourage investment in green technologies? The UK has a decent record of reducing dependency on fossil fuels compared with other G7 nations, but it has largely been on the basis of importing the products of the leading nations in this field, especially Denmark and Sweden. (These imports are going to be more costly after the 31st of December, unless we negotiate a fair trade deal with the EU.) Now that the once-off benefit of eliminating coal from our energy supply has been achieved, the spotlight shifts to road transport. Where is the British manufacturer prepared to follow Nissan in building a mass-market electric car in the UK? (Jaguar's i-Pace will be produced in Austria; the Welsh-built Aston Martin Rapide E is aimed at a niche market) How secure is Nissan's investment in Sunderland?

More importantly, where is the investment in battery technology? It seems there are no plans for any of the large players to produce high-capacity rechargeable batteries in the UK. And why is it in climate-change-denying Australia that the most promising battery development to date has occurred?

Government and industry need to direct more investment into green research and to building up the supply chain for servicing the green industries of the future. It will take time, but we must start now.

Flying dilemma

So the government has found a way of keeping Flybe aloft without cutting air passenger duty, which would be a regressive move in terms of its green policies. (Worryingly, though, ministers have promised to "review" the tax.) In finding ways of easing the airline's tax debt, the government could be said to be flouting the EU's state aid rules - and also Conservatives' own competitive instincts.

However, as comments by business flyers quoted in the BBC report indicate, the carrier is essential for certain classes of workers. Certainly, delays to and cancellation of large parts of the rail electrification programme which Liberal Democrats established while in coalition has thrown more travellers within Britain onto the roads and airways, but for journeys to other parts of these islands and to Scandinavia there is no practical alternative. Additionally, Flybe can point to the fact that the majority of its fleet consists of the relatively economical turboprop aircraft.

Fall in foreign industrial investment in UK

So far, I have found only the French version of EY's assessment of the appeal to foreign investors of the leading industrial nations of Europe (including Turkey).

La France reste étonnamment attractive et conserve la 1ère place européenne pour les sites de production d’entreprises à capitaux étrangers.

• En 2018, la France a vu se réaliser 339 projets de création et d’extension d’unités de production.
• La perspective du Brexit fait chuter le Royaume-Uni de ce podium européen (-35%, 140 projets).
• 70% des dirigeants d’entreprises étrangères sont confiants quant aux perspectives de l’industrie en France.
• Néanmoins, les industriels restent « prudents » dans leurs investissements, avec une majorité d’extensions et des projets qui ne créent qu’une trentaine d’emplois en moyenne.

My rusty French (I scraped an A level over a generation ago) suggests that this means UK was not at the top of this league in 2018 or even 2017 as various Leave supporters implied that we were. Indeed, we were not even in bronze medal position in 2018, because of a precipitate fall of 35% in the number of new investment projects, thanks to Brexit. I can only assume Guido Fawkes, Boris Johnson, Saved Javid et al. ranked financial speculators as investors to justify their claims.

Ernst & Young Global Limited (to give EY its full title) is based in London. One wonders whether the press office here will produce an English-language version.

A test for the American president

The earthquakes in Puerto Rico which began last Tuesday have not made the broadcast news headlines. We should be grateful to the online news department of the BBC for putting the reports on social media.

Puerto Rico is a US territory with no democratic representation in the States proper. The US administration has not noticeably contributed to relief for the island after last year's hurricane damage. Surely, after this latest blow, President Trump should loosen the federal purse strings to help a country in his own back yard for which his nation is responsible? He could direct the savings made by "bringing the boys home" to the reconstruction of Puerto Rico.

There is no sign of movement so far. This should be a warning for those of our politicians who see the future of England and Wales as a dependency of the US.

A role for the Sussexes?

They have some capital, it seems (Meghan in savings from her acting days, Harry inherited from his mother) but they are clearly looking for long-term stream of income other than from the civil list. It seems to me that, if the other heads of state agree, there could be a paid appointment at the head of the Commonwealth. The Prince of Wales is clearly out of sympathy with the non-white Commonwealth and has had to be pushed into accepting Commonwealth duties by his mother the Queen. The Sussexes have intimated that they want to base themselves in Canada, and indeed by the time this message is posted, Meghan will already have landed there. Taking on the Commonwealth leadership role from Canada will remove any objection that the organisation is too London-centred. And no prominent couple could me more obviously free of racial prejudice.

Who are the terrorists?

Guido Fawkes is very exercised by Jeremy Corbyn's failure to label the late Qasem Soleimani as a terrorist. (In April 2019, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo designated Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Quds Force, which Soleimani commanded, as foreign terrorist organisations.) But is it correct to describe a state official as a terrorist?  If so, then the term ought also to be applied to Russia's head of GRU who organised the Salisbury killings. Mr Pompeo should have no objection to the Israeli commander who committed war crimes in Palestine as a terrorist, as some Palestinian activists have done.

The irony is that twice Solimani has been on the side of the West, in fighting against Da'esh and before that the Taliban.

More stray thoughts

I much regret that the concentration on Brexit in the general election gave the party only a minor boost in England and Scotland, but seems to have invigorated the Leave side of the debate. Some good people lost their seats as a result. Madeleine Moon has been an outstanding supporter not only of remaining in the EU but also of our armed services.

I was glad to see that Thangam Debbonaire, another strong Remainer and one who gives classical music a good name, kept her seat in Bristol West. One had fears that the Green candidate might split the "Remain" vote and allow a Tory in, but they proved groundless.

Stray thoughts on the late election

Polling station at Coedffranc school

I had started jotting some immediate impressions of the December 2019 general election shortly after the final results were in. Then came the rush of views of the commentariat on social, broadcast and print media to digest. It seemed sensible to wait a little longer for the usual later, considered, academic analysis before committing my impressions to this blog.

However, I have now received the latest incarnation of UKElect which not only incorporates all the voting figures from throughout the UK, but also the ability to compare voting patterns with previous elections. So it was probably worth a look again at my immediate impressions before starting to play tunes on UKElect.

I wrote at the time:

There was not much to stop the juggernaut of the Johnson party machine. Local by-election results over the last year pointed to an increase in the Conservative vote all over the country, probably unprecedented for a party which had been in partial or whole control of the country for nine years. Those same by-election results showed a disastrous fall in support for the Labour party, again throughout the country.

This  pattern of increased support for increasingly reactionary conservative forces and a collapse in a belief in socialist solutions to our economic and social problems was not restricted to this country. It showed in national elections in Europe in 2019 and especially in the European Parliament elections earlier in the year. In the latter case, the loss of socialist MEPs was compensated for by an increase in Liberal representation. This was a result of proportional voting systems mandated by the EU for EP elections. There was a percentage rise in the Liberal Democrat vote in our general election, too, higher than that of the Conservatives, but it was spread too evenly across the country to make a difference under our antiquated electoral system.

In the face of that overarching movement in public opinion,  there was not much that the Labour and Liberal Democrat campaigns could have done to unseat Johnson's Conservatives. There were obviously flaws which, if addressed, could have improved our representation. However, I believe that the immediate recriminations - which continue in the case of Labour! - went over the top.

For instance, the Liberal Democrat policy of retracting the Article 50 letter without waiting for a further referendum was said to have been fatal. This argument fails to recognise that the Conservative position was equally firmly against a confirmatory Brexit referendum in spite of increased disquiet about the conduct of the 2016 referendum. If people had wanted more delay with a referendum at the end of it, they would have voted Labour in large numbers. As it is, those parties which took a firm and decisive line on Brexit saw their vote share go up - Lib Dems' more than Conservatives' though clearly not enough - and ambivalent Labour's went down.

The major flaw* in the Lib Dem campaign as I see it was its presidential style. (The personality of the leader impacted Labour, too - v. earlier criticism of Jeremy Corbyn.) I know it is received wisdom that success in elections derives from majoring on the personality of the leader. This belief probably results from letting people trained in journalism and/or PR run electoral campaigns, but it is a trap where a bottom-up party like the Liberal Democrats is concerned. Our local campaign leaflets emphasise that they come from a Liberal Democrat team - why does our national campaign not do the same? In the case of the December GE, we had a good story to tell in that respect: front-line spokespeople who had more experience in government than the opposition and not much less than the government front-bench junto. It was a mis-step for Jo Swinson to declare spontaneously without any hedging or provisos that she wanted to be prime minister. It was surely enough for her to point out that she could do a better job than the other two leaders (which, in fairness, she also did)  but she should also have spotlighted the talent on the Lib Dem front bench. Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May got away with presenting themselves as authority figures. It is said that they reminded Conservatives of their nannies; I would add that they probably reminded other voters of their primary school head teachers. It also occurred to me, probably unfairly, that the clearly younger Jo reminded many men of wives from whom it was difficult to take direction.

I do not repent of my decision to vote for Jo as leader. She would have made a good PM too, someone who got things done but not at the expense of the people suffering from cuts to the welfare system, who will probably continue to suffer under this class-bound Johnson government. Her own mistake, which may have cost her seat, was to continue the inflexible line on the Union which in my opinion has blighted the Scottish Liberal Democrats since the Nationalists took power in Edinburgh.

There had been a warning of the dangers of the "great man" approach to electioneering, if only enough people had remained from the 2010 campaign to heed it. In 2010, Nick Clegg was presented as the Lib Dem answer to David Cameron. Indeed, he made an immediate impact in the first TV hustings. However, in the last week of the campaign, the Conservative media were able to find weak spots in his presentation and concentrated their fire on him. It was noticeable when canvassing that the response to me as a Liberal Democrat on the doorsteps was cooler than at the start. I cannot have been the only foot-soldier to have experienced this, and surely the intelligence must have made its way up to HQ. It must have been the early postal vote, impressed by Nick, which made up for a falling-away on polling day itself. (Of course, the secrecy of the ballot ensures that I can never prove my contention; I do not have Laura Kuenssberg's X-ray eyes). I remember thinking at the time that rather than present the mainly hostile media with a static target, it would have been better to have switched back to Vince Cable for the final week. He had already impressed with his economic competence compared with that of the Labour government, and with the confirmation in 2008 of his warnings that the UK economy was headed for a crash. It might have been enough to nick a few more Conservative seats and enable us to have more meaningful coalition discussions with Labour. History would have been very different.

* Unite to Remain had a malign effect in Wales, but was insignificant in England and irrelevant in Scotland. However, I will probably come on to that in a later post.

Approaching twelfth night

Right, well, that's seen off the last of the sprouts (the recipe here works well even without the chestnuts). I am now completing my annual ritual - a little late this yule - of listening to Dankworth's take on Dickens, especially his "Ghosts" ("God rest ye merry gentlemen" as might be seen by jazzers through the ages). I suppose I really ought to think about serious blogging again - but after the decorations have come down.