Jo Swinson may well be Liberal Democrat leader - but not yet

I cannot claim to have met Jo Swinson, but, already a busy MP, she came to the 2006 by-election in Dunfermline and West Fife and I overheard her conversation with party workers. She struck me then as a clear-sighted and determined person. In coalition, she was a late call-up by Nick Clegg, first as a stand-in for a Jenny Willot taking maternity leave, but later as a junior minister at BIS. Less tainted than most of the pre-coalition intake (she voted against the rise in tuition fees, for instance), she would seem to be the natural successor to Tim Farron. However, she has early ruled herself out, preferring to stand for the deputy leadership. Admittedly, she still has a young child and a constituency remote from Westminster to look after, but one suspects a long-term plan. There is a hint in her Liberal Democrat Voice statement:

My reflections and conversations about a range of factors have confirmed my conviction that the right role for me now is Deputy Leader.

Four weeks ago today, I ran a marathon.  Training for and running marathons teaches you a lot about planning, perseverance, and resilience. Creating lasting political change is a marathon, not a sprint.

If this parliament runs its full course, the typical Liberal Democrat pattern would be followed, gaining momentum through by-election and local authority successes. However, the chances are that there will be an early general election, when the advantage will still be with the well-endowed conservative parties, before the dire effects of Brexit hit the general public. For this reason, the new leader's reign will almost certainly be seen as a failure in that we will not regain the heights of 2006.

Churchill was right (continued)

After posting Friday's piece, I came across this, which concludes:

I suspect, therefore, that the Tories are now rather like the party they were in the days of the Corn Laws: they represent interests which are hostile to economic progress.  

There is of course nothing original in the claim that landlords’ interests are a block on economic growth. As somebody once said:

Unearned increments in land are not the only form of unearned or undeserved profit, but they are the principal form of unearned increment, and they are derived from processes which are not merely not beneficial, but positively detrimental to the general public…The land monopolist only has to sit still and watch complacently his property multiplying in value, sometimes many fold, without either effort or contribution on his part!

That was Winston Churchill in 1909. Tories like to compare themselves to him. But in one respect at least, they are more reactionary now than he was a century ago.  

Today's Tories might retort that, by 1909, Churchill had been seduced by the Liberals and would not return effectively to Conservative politics until after the Great War. However, there was probably little to choose between the instincts of the Edwardian Churchill and those of the man who, looking forward to reconstruction after the Second World War, agreed to commissioning the Beveridge Report and gave RA Butler his head over the Education Act 1944.

Could Michael Sheen work another miracle?

I am looking forward to today's Radio 4 programme about the sadly-neglected Plaza in Port Talbot. Michael Sheen has achieved good publicity for his home town before. Port Talbot councillors now dominate the ruling group on the council. Can the last art deco cinema in the area not only be saved but also revived?

Winston Churchill was right

According to next week's Radio Times, Ian Hislop will reveal in a forthcoming programme on immigration that the main reason for Winston Churchill "ratting" from the Conservatives to the Liberals was his objection to his former party's Aliens Act 1905. It puts to shame those xenophobic UKIP and Conservative members who mistakenly call Churchill in aid for their views.

AR Gurney

Thanks to Terry Teachout for bringing a playwright previously unknown to me to our attention. Gurney seems to have been the US equivalent of William Douglas-Home, a writer of drawing-room comedies which rely on recognition of, even identification with, their milieu on the part of audiences. Such work does not travel well, but we in the UK have become so much more familiar with US life, thanks to TV and social media, that it might be worth a London production of one of his most successful plays as a tribute on his passing.

Only his "Love Letters" has been shown on TV in the UK as far as I can see. It has also been remade in France as well as in some other continental countries, as have a couple of his other plays.

The Lords may still say "no"

Lord Thomas of Gresford sees no legal reason why the House of Peers should roll over in the face of joint Conservative/DUP Bills, even if these should pass the Commons. He explains why here.

Before reading the Liberal Democrat Voice article, I had not realised that Liberals had been ignored when the Salisbury Convention had been drawn up originally.

St Alice Day

Are faith and English liberalism incompatible?

This evening, Tim Farron announced his resignation from leadership of the Liberal Democrats for a reason that would have put him at the top of the tree in US politics: a very public evangelical Christian faith. Mrs May can put it about that she is a vicar's daughter and vote in line with rather Old Testament beliefs, but her party was comfortable with that - at least until she made a massive electoral miscalculation. Indeed, it would be difficult for an English Conservative to lead the party without at least a token adherence to Christianity, preferably Anglicanism. Tony Blair did not hide his high church leanings, though admittedly on Alastair Campbell's advice  he did not push them ("We don't do God"). But leading Liberal Democrats who are clearly committed to Christianity have been subject to continuous sniping, Indeed, I have speculated in the past that this is the reason for Sir Alan Beith not achieving the party leadership or the Speaker's Chair, both of which he would have fitted.

Tim's voting record on social issues has been virtually completely liberal. He also does not break promises. One of the people touted as a possible successor was one of those who, when in government, broke a pledge to the NUS over tuition fees. Tim did not.

I write as an agnostic, but not a militant atheist, so I believe I can take an objective view. A party which explicitly reaches out to all faiths and none should not penalise members for strongly held personal views which do not intrude on their public life. Good luck to Tim's successor.