Category: UK POlitics

Guardian Intrusion For 13 June 2013

David Omand, writing in yesterdays Guardian says we shouldn’t be surprised to discover that our intelligence services are working with the Americans and it’s a good thing that they are. He is right. But that does not mean that we should allow a friendly power (even our most friendly one) to intrude on our citizen’s privacy in ways they would not permit with their own.

He says that this is all OK because its only computers who see our data and humans will only see what they programme the computer to show them. But who does the programming?

He says we can be re-assured because our Government’s are all operating to the rule of law. But what if, as I believe, the law we have is an utterly defective one?

He proposes six brand new principles which should govern state intrusion into our privacy. I want to assert three well established old ones.

We have recently been told, even by those charged with overseeing the extent of state intrusion in our lives that “Citizens who are not breaking the law have no cause to be concerned about intrusion into their private lives.”

Wrong point.

The right one is: “If Governments never broke the law, citizens would have no cause to be concerned”.

But no Government can make such a promise either for itself, or for its successors. And no citizen should believe them if they did.

I remember in some previous life watching Post Office experts steaming open people’s letters. It has been done for a hundred years and more. The practice was (is, no doubt) legal, acceptable and accepted by most sensible citizens as a proper power to be exercised by the state in order to preserve our security and fight serious crime – PROVIDED this power is subject to three long established stringent safeguards – three “safeguard principles”, if you like.

First, that this power is used specifically and in an individually targeted manner. Fishing trips are not allowed. Nor is it permitted to hoover up the communications all citizens – or all citizens in a specific class – Muslims for instance, or EDL members for that matter – on the chance that those who protect us might just stumble across something which is of interest, or which might possibly be of interest at some time in the future.

Secondly the power to intrude into our privacy must be based on evidence – not just vague suspicion or statistical probability – that we are behaving, or about to behave, illegally.

And thirdly, granting this power must be subject to a warrant given by a third party, preferably a legal one, but possibly a Minister responsible to Parliament, who is outside the organisation which is seeking the right to intrude.

These are the safeguards which were in use when the state was steaming open letters. They were the same principles which were applied when state intrusion extended to telephones. Of course, now that those who would threaten our security have moved to new forms of communication such as emails and Skype, the state must have the power to follow them there, too. No sensible citizen would want to deny the state the ability to go where the serious law-breakers can go. But no alert one would permit that to happen unless that power remained subject to the same safeguards as before.

It is not the widening of the field of intrusion which is objectionable here, it is the weakening of the safeguards which should be in place to control it.

Some in this Government (and even more in the last one) propose that there is a fundamental difference between the “data” of communications (who communicated with whom) and the “content” (what they said). Not so. There is perhaps a difference of degree – but there is none of principle. The safeguards which apply to the first might be set at a lower level than those which apply to the second, but the basic principle remains the same in both cases. Who I sent a twitter message to a year ago, is no more the business of my Government than what I said – unless there are solid reasons to make it so.

The problem is that this crucial dam was breached when the last Government allowed the intelligence organisations the power to hoover up all types of what were then the most modern forms of communications in direct and flagrant breach of all of these principles – instead of collecting information on individuals based on evidence of guilt, they permitted the collection of information on everyone, guilty or not. No evidence required; no need for warrants to be applied for. Now we are told – including by those who were Minsters when this egregious law was brought in – that all we need to do now to make ourselves safe, is to update the current law to cope with even newer, new technologies.

Wrong.

This is not just an opportunity to up to date what we already have. It is an opportunity to amend it so that, at last the laws governing the right for Governments to intrude into our private communications conform with the basic principles which have always applied in these matters in the past – and should still.

Now – most especially in the light of what we know has been happening in the US (and perhaps here too?) – we need to deal with what appears as a new challenge, but is in fact an old one, not by abandon long-established principles, but by re-asserting them.

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Government’s proposals on the retention of data – The Times 11 April

Here is your pub quiz question for the day.

You live in a country where the security services have unfettered right to know exactly who you spoke to on the phone and when and for how long, over the last year. Where would you be? China? Russia? Egypt? Some South American dictatorship? No, you would be in Britain.

In 2005, the last Government used its presidency of the EU to push through a directive requiring domestic telephone and internet providers to retain the full records of who contacted whom for a year and provide the Government with access to them on demand. This legislation was opposed by European Liberals and has had a very rough ride in other European countries. Sweden has yet to enact it and the courts in Germany, Romania and the Czech Republic have ruled it unconstitutional.

The coalition Government promised to halt this move towards greater surveillance. Yet now they seem to propose a massive extension to it.

Liberals accept, subject to safeguards decided by Parliament, that the Government has a right to monitor the private communications of its citizens where this is necessary for national security and in the pursuit of serious crime. And that these powers should keep pace with the development of communications.

But there must be safeguards, too.

Any extension of these powers should be strictly proportionate to the threat. That’s why we opposed the Labour Government when it tried to establish a central database in 2008.

Any exercise of these powers must be subject to a warrant and strictly targeted at individuals, where good grounds exist for believing that they are involved in serious law breaking or a threat to the security of the State. We have always resisted a “fishing trip” approach by the security services, where they seek the right to gather information on innocent citizens merely on the grounds that there may be among them, some who are committing serious crime.

The right to monitor private communications is thus justified only where it is specific, evidence based and applied to an individual.

It cannot be justified by treating us as a nation of suspects. It cannot be justified on the grounds that the information gathered might be useful to the State at some unspecified date in the future.

The Government’s new proposals to extend the retention of email, social media, web-sites and internet phone records breach these basic principles; they are disproportionate and they seek a generalised extension of State monitoring which apply to everyone, rather than to individuals.

The Government claims that it will have unfettered access only to “data” (i.e sender, recipient, time and duration) rather than content, so this does not constitute “a communications interception”. That is sophistry.

As free citizens we have a right to talk to whom we wish, when we wish and wherever we wish without the State knowing about it, unless there is good cause for it to do so. It is not just the content of our communication that is private. It is the fact that it occurred at all, when and for how long. An email is not just the text. It is also the sender, the time it is sent and the person it is sent to.

The “content” cannot be separated from the context.

It is for this reason that it is difficult to see how these proposals do not infringe to the Coalition agreement, which promised: “We will end the storage of email and internet records without good reason.”

The danger here is not diminished because there will be no centralised State database of the sort Labour proposed. That is largely an irrelevance. These proposals bring into existence a series of statutorily required databases held by others, in a form dictated by the State, to which the State will have unfettered access.

Nor are these dangers dealt with by hedging them around with safeguards. Or by making them subject to oversight by the Interception of Communications Commissioner. The principles being infringed here are much too big to be protected by safeguards and oversight.

Of course the security services have good reason to argue otherwise. It is their job to seek the best weapons they can to do the critical job we ask of them, especially in an Olympic year. We look to them to safeguard our national security. But we look to the Government to safeguard our liberties.

If these proposals were to allow our security services to put a case to ministers (or a judge) to extend the holding of intercept information on an individual or even many individuals, I would have no quibble with them. That would be specific, evidence based and subject to external approval. But this is not, it appears what is being suggested.

We should update our current interception laws to deal with the new ways criminals and terrorists communicate. But the need to have new laws should not mean parting company with old principles.

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A week – as they say – is a long time in politics. As they clock up another New Year, the old stones of Downing Street must be musing to themselves that they have rarely seen as much change as in the last one.

A year ago this was a pulsating palace of light, whose windows were always ablaze and in and out of whose ever open door sluiced a gay tide of pop stars and poets and Italian media mogul Presidents accused of corruption and all the paraphernalia of London and international glitterati.

A year later Camelot has turned into Gormenghast. All is sepulchral gloom. A single guttering candle shines in some high casement window as our son-of the manse, workaholic Prime Minster pours over the nation’s accounts, or some abstruse political text which only academics have read, or maybe contemplates whether he really could, as Gladstone before him, bring in a regime for counting the number of postage stamps his Ministers use.

It is not, for sure, a joyless place. But it is now a serious place.

Gordon’s style is serious, too. Gone is the sofa and fireside the chat. Now we do business. And it is based on facts. Tony used to view meetings as group therapy sessions and then, often in a way which was quite feline, but almost always by a process no-one could quite work out, he would arrive at his view.

Gordon has a view before he starts. It is not one lightly formed. He has studied it; he has read the books; he has listened to the experts; he has gone off into the wilderness to eat locusts and honey (or in his case his cottage in Fyfe with a trunkful of books) and he has returned, not with an idea, but with an opinion. I was amazed when he asked me to join his cabinet. Actually we talked briefly and very courteously about his kind proposal and my brief reply. But we talked extensively about the battle against international terror. And I didn’t have to explain anything to him. He had already read all the books I had read. He had already reached the conclusions I had reached. He was already ahead of me.

But knowing is not the same as governing.

There also has to be magic in government – and even mystery – and, nowadays a lot of showmanship, too. Tony was a master magician, who could always manage the mystery and excelled at the showmanship. Gordon is not good at any of these. We will see in the next year whether this really matters and if so how much.

Democracy House Magazine

It is now fifteen years or so since I first, as Leader of the Lib Dems, started to warn that there was a crisis coming in our democracy. The mismatch between the way people live their modern lives and the old unchanged way by which we are governed grows wider and wider. In our personal lives we have choice and control; the internet offers us a freedom individuals have never had before; to range the world for information; to choose our friends without the constraints of geography or convention; to communicate our views not just from place to place but person to person, irrespective of their rank importance or position. The market tells us, from supermarket, to bank, to service industry, that we are king; that consumer choice is the rule which runs the world. But democratic politics remains distant, deaf, arrogant, unresponsive and resistant to choice beyond a choice of three once every four or five years. The result is that, we suddenly  – frighteningly – find that increasingly it is not Governments in charge, but the faceless, unpredictable, irresistible surges of face-book opinion; that our establishments of democratic power are universally distrusted and, in many cases, hated. Nor is this just a phenomenon of the Arab street – it is found on ours too, as the Student riots of last year and the London riots of this should remind us. “Turning and turning on the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer” as W.B.Yeats put it.

There are those who, admitting the need for change, propose “put our house in order” by providing a Downing Street facility for electronic petitions or providing more transparency in our system of Members expenses.

Necessary, but not sufficient. The gap between Government and governed; between politics and people is now too deep for small measures.

For the last two, maybe three decades our political challenges have been the challenges of contentment. The issue has been how to distribute the ever larger fruits of ever expanding economic well-being. The politics of conviction took second place behind the value-free politics of managerialism. How we distributed the goodies was more important than what we believed in. But now, as the game becomes not how to distribute. not the fruits of growth, but the pain of retrenchment values and belief are about to come centre stage again. And, given the vacuum the conventional Parties have left in this space, the danger is that the first ideas which begin to take root here will be the ugly ones. You can see it happening already. If we will not return to a democracy built around the clash of great ideas, then others, outside St Paul’s and elsewhere,  are going to do it for us

Democracies depend on an effective connection between Government and governed – and ours has been shattered. Unless we can radically reshape the space in which we conduct our democratic politics, then I fear there is worse to come.

There has to be a radical re-settlement of power within our constitution. The old settlement of Bagehot and Dicey will no longer do. The key will be to emulate the spirit of our age by placing power closer to people; by creating – or maybe recreating – effective intermediary institutions between the citizen and the State and having the courage to invest them with real power. Westminster should do far less – maybe then it would do things better. We are a national Parliament; let us then concentrate on those things that are genuinely national in nature; defence; foreign policy; macro-economics; the instruments of justice; a framework of national rights and entitlements which must be available to every citizen. But how those entitlements are delivered, especially in those services which touch on the welfare of the citizen, such as health, education and welfare ought increasingly to be decided by the citizen at a point much closer to where they live than a distant and un-listening Government hundreds away in London.

Many say democracy is our most treasured institution. They are probably right. But in so many advanced Western countries, Britain included, democracy has grown old, tired, decrepit, widely disregarded and, in the eyes of many even increasingly corrupted. The choice is between real reform or continuing decay.

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Should Lib Dems go for a Coalition? Daily Telegraph

12 May 2010

By Paddy Ashdown

For many of us in the Liberal Democrats, this is a rather unexpected moment. And a somewhat nerve-racking one, too.

For decades, our party worked towards a realignment of the Left; an alliance with Labour that would reshape politics and bring in a new and more modern form of government. Now we find ourselves in coalition not with the centre-Left, but with the centre-Right. What happened? And can it work?

Well certainly, there are many who are sceptical. In my old constituency office in Yeovil, the calls coming in have been half in favour, half against. Those who oppose the deal, some of whom voted Lib Dem to keep the Conservatives out of office, will look at the situation and think that it is a disaster. Perhaps they will even consider their membership of the party. It will be especially galling for those Liberal Democrat candidates and campaigners who came second to a Tory last Thursday (and, of course, vice versa).

I’ll admit that I was sceptical, too. A deal with the Labour Party would have been easier, more comfortable and far more consistent with our strategy of realignment – and it was this which I worked for over the past few days. But some of the old Neanderthals in Labour wrecked that opportunity, and have now turned their party back towards tribalism.

We Lib Dems could then have abandoned Nick Clegg’s promise to work with others in the national interest, moved back to our comfort zone, sat tight and done nothing. That would have been the simpler thing to do. But it would have been the wrong one.

The Tories, under David Cameron, seemed to understand the demand from the electorate for a new kind of politics better than many in Old Labour, and responded to it with speed, understanding and a good deal of statesmanship. Those of us who learnt our politics in opposition to the Tory party of the Thatcher era found this surprising, and in some cases even quite hard to deal with.

But our negotiators, and those from the Tory party, showed that these were different times, by producing a remarkable coalition document which contained commitments to political modernisation, voting reform, fair taxes, such as the £10,000 threshold for income tax, a clean environment and civil liberties, all of which any Lib Dem can be proud.

Of course, there are things in here which are much more difficult for us, such as Europe and nuclear power. But you can’t build the new politics of partnership without making compromises. There is, too, a huge task ahead, and there will be many bumpy moments. Whether this coalition will work depends not on its shiny newness on the morning after it was made, but on how dog-eared it will look after four years of tough, hard, wearing decisions at a time of national crisis.

Will the deal hold? Well, there will undoubtedly be some outriders who want to see it brought down. But their numbers may be fewer than we thought. It is significant that the meeting of the Lib Dems’ ruling Federal Executive and our MPs and Lords was virtually unanimous. And if our leader was able to get a majority there, he will probably get the same welcome at our consultative conference in Birmingham 
this weekend. He certainly deserves it.

Meanwhile, Labour is about to begin a knock-down, drag-out, blood-on-the-floor battle for the heart and soul of the party. Just as the Tories did in 1997, it will probably go back, lick its wounds, and arrive at the wrong conclusion, by moving away from the centre ground.

Sadly, for the moment at least, the great project of the realignment of the Left is over. Surprisingly, the changes Britain need appear to be coming from the opposite direction – a direction which I never expected, but Disraeli probably would have.

So a little euphoria is justified; because something many thought impossible has been done. Something that creates an opportunity to provide not only the stable government that the nation needs, but real change and the possibility for a new kind of politics.

None of this, however, should hide the fact that there will be difficult times ahead. There will be divisions. And harsh words. And real tensions. And lots and lots of tough choices.

But bankable goodwill has been created in these past few days; a remarkable coalition document has been produced, of which both sides can feel proud; and real statesmanship and vision have been shown by two young leaders. These ingredients give us about the best start we could have for the hard journey ahead.

I refuse to use the tired old clichés about “new dawns”. But I have to confess that I find myself still blinking with surprise at where we have got to, and how it has come about. And perhaps a little more hopeful than is rational about what is now possible, if we can continue as we have started.

The Coalition Guardian 8 May 2011

Nick Clegg said after last week’s painful and deep reverses, that we Lib Dems must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and get back to work at the business we set our hand to – working through the coalition, to clear up the mess that Labour left behind.

And he is right of course. And we will. We have heard the message many of our erstwhile voters have sent. We need to do more to persuade them that compromise is not betrayal. And we accept, as democrats should, the overwhelming verdict of the ballot box on the question of AV. You cannot be a Liberal Democrat and a bad loser (or at least if you are, you’ve joined the wrong Party!)

So its back to business. But that does not mean business as usual. Things have changed because of what has happened in the last three weeks – not because of the AV result but because of the failure of our coalition partners to restrain their supporters in the way that it was fought.

Mr Cameron tells us that, though the No campaign was funded to a level exceeding 90% by Conservative money, he could not exercise restraint on its unbridled personal attacks on his principle coalition partner. To which Liberal democrats say – pull the other one. Did he even try? It doesn’t seem likely, since her resolutely refused every opportunity even to dissociate himself from a campaign which was as disgraceful, as it was damaging to the Coalition he leads.

We are told by Downing Street that the reason they had no influence over the No campaigns tactics was because they were led by the Labour Party. If that is so (and it is difficult to believe), then to provide Tory funds for a campaign which you then hand over to Labour to do damage to the your own Government, is, I agree, not betrayal; just “bloody stupidity”.

We are now told that Mr Cameron is a master strategist. But it is not strategy to exchange short term appeasement your right wing at the cost of long term good relations with your coalition partners. These tactics may have delivered some advantages for the Conservatives last Thursday. But they have consequences – and these are likely to be felt for some considerable time. Our relationship with the Conservative is not built on affection (and if it was, there would be a lot less of it now than there was six weeks ago). It is built on the business we must do together to put our country right. But even business relationships need trust and there is now much less of that around – in fact there is probably none at all, just at the moment.

That is not to say that a working level of trust cannot be rebuilt – but it will not be done quickly or easily.

The Liberal Democrats commitment to honouring the Coalition agreement to the letter, is bankable in all circumstances. But going beyond that will now require painstaking persuasion and the patient reconstruction of our relationship.

I have heard right wing voices trumpeting that, since Conservatives did so wonderfully well in last week’s elections and Liberal Democrats so disastrously badly (their language, not mine) we can now be ignored while they get on with the job of running Britain on Conservative principles. One even put forward the outstandingly generous proposition that, if we took their whip they might give us a free run at the next election. There is a short answer to that which comes in two words, the first of which has four letters and the second, three.

Conservatives would be very foolish indeed to misread the Lib Dem’s polite restraint about using our leverage in this coalition in the interests of collegiality, with an unwillingness to do so if we are forced to.

Mr Lansley’s proposals for reform of the NHS are not in the coalition agreement. Nick Clegg says he will now be spearheading our Lib Dem approach to ensure that these proposals when they are finally brought forward, contain, not just Conservative hopes of what the NHS might be, but also conform to Liberal Democrat principles about what the NHS must be. The signal is clear and I hope our Conservative can see it– Nick has now made this our key priority. And we will back this with votes in Parliament where we need to. Shirley Williams has said she will not vote for these proposals in the Lords in their present form. And, I, for one, will be right behind her.

Then there is the reform of the House of Lords itself. Even amongst other competing domestic priorities, this has extra importance now – for four reasons; it is a crucial part of the modernisation of our democracy; it was in both Party’s manifestos; it is a key part of the coalition agreement. And, given what has just happened, we Liberal Democrats will now want to be reassured that we have coalition partners who will stand up for what we agreed together, rather than backing down in the face of their right wingers.

The last few weeks have been bruising – and not just electorally for the Liberal Democrats. Trust has been damaged too. The result of the AV referendum we accept. The way our coalition partners fought it, we do not. This foolish long term damage for short term reasons can be repaired. We can make this work – we must. But it is not going to be nearly as easy to do so, as it was before all this was allowed to happen.

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Observer

31 Aug 2014

It is always easy to persuade frightened people to part with their liberties. But it is always right for politicians who value liberty to resist attempts to increase arbitrary executive powers unless this is justified, not by magnifying fear, but by actual facts.

The Government on Friday announced that the imminent danger of Jihadist attack meant Britain’s threat level should be raised to “Severe”. Then, from the Prime Minister downwards, Tory Ministers took to every available air-wave to tell us how frightened we should be and why this required a range of new powers for them to exercise. For the record the threat level in Northern Ireland has been “Severe” for the past four past four years. As it was in all Britain for many years in the 1980s and 90s, when the IRA threat was at its greatest.

I say this, not to deny the threat from returning Jihadists – though as the former head of Counter Terrorism for MI6, Richard Barrett said yesterday, this should not be over-estimated. But rather to make the point that this is not a new threat. It is one we have faced before and one we know how to deal with – effectively, without panic and without a whole new range of executive powers which could endanger our liberties. Indeed, when it comes to facing threats, it was surely far more difficult to cope with IRA terrorists slipping across the Irish Sea than it is to stop Jihadists returning from Iraq?

Of course, in these circumstances, the police and the security services will lead the clamour for more powers. They are charged by us to maintain our safety. It is natural they should want the most powerful weapons to enable them to do so. That’s their job. But it is the job of politicians to act, not as cheerleaders for those demands, but as jealous protectors of our liberties who measure any demand for their reduction against necessity, supported by evidence. Mr Cameron seemed to support this view when he said recently there should be no knee-jerk reactions. Since when, ahead of Monday’s Parliamentary debate, senior Tory Minsters have indulged in a spasm of knee-jerking which would have made even St Vitus feel concerned. And Labour, frightened as always when it come to liberty and security, capitulates to the demand. It is difficult not to conclude that there is as much domestic politics at play here, as there is national security.

I have no objection to what Nick Clegg has called specific, proportionate responses to strengthen our hand in tackling this threat. But these must be evidence based, careful of our liberties and sensitive to the need to keep moderate Islam on our side. For the wider threat of global Jihadism, will only be beaten if we can engage and work with the overwhelming majority of Islam who want to see their religion recaptured from the forces of darkness and medievalism that now threatens them. They, not western bombs and rockets are our most powerful allies.

Here it is not Mr Cameron’s proposals that I fear, it is his rhetoric. He recently told us that this fight was about defending “Western values”. I cannot think of any phrase, short of those used by George Bush during the Iraq war, which more damages our ability to win this battle. For it at once confirms the Jihadists’ Manichean view that this is indeed a struggle between the West and them, while at the same time alienating those very Islamic moderates, whose help we need most in defeating ISIS and its cohorts. The truth is that this increasingly brutal and dangerous battle will NOT be won for our “Western values” but for the universal values which underpin and unite all the world’s great religions and philosophies – including, perhaps especially at this moment, Islam.

The point here, which the Government is studiously missing is that the best defence for Britain lies, not action on the domestic front, but on the international one. The biggest danger we face, is not returning Jihadists, but a widening religious war which threatens, not just to engulf the Middle East and change its borders, but to spread across the entire global Islamic community with potential consequences for peace on a much wider scale.

I happen to believe that what is happening in the Middle East at the moment is a convulsion which will, in due course play itself out, as moderate Muslims recapture their religion for its true values. But in the process there could be terrible suffering, the obliteration of borders, a widening regional war. And with Russia supporting Assad and Tehran, even the possibility of the great powers being sucked in on opposing sides. With so many piles of tinder lying around in the littoral which stretches from the Ukraine to the Maghreb, this is not the time for sensible Governments to allow lesser domestic threats to distract them from far, far greater international ones.

What we should be seeing from the Government, rather than just domestic measures to protect ourselves, is a co-ordinated international strategy to defeat those who threaten us, along with the rest of the civilised world. This should match judicious military action (eg in protecting the Kurds as a northern bulwark against ISIS) with a broader diplomatic effort to first isolate and then defeat the jihadists. I suspect that in this struggle, diplomacy will play a larger part than military action. This should include the closer engagement of Turkey, a rapprochement with the new reformist government in Tehran, support for moderate Arab states like Jordan, strong international pressure on Saudi Arabia and Qatr to stop funding the extremists. And finally some action at last to extinguish the burning coal at the heart of the Middle Eastern conflagration, the illegal Israeli settlements on the West bank which strangle at birth the only peace Israel and the Palestinians can have; one based on a two state solution.

It is action on this front, far more than on the domestic one, which will keep our country safe.

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Guardian

1 March 2013

I am writing this article before we know the outcome of the epic Eastleigh by-election. And deliberately so. Because its message applies, win, lose or draw in this close-run contest.

A line in Kipling’s great poem “If” says: “Triumph or disaster, treat these two imposters just the same”. It’s a good motto for Lib Dems just at the moment. A good result in Eastleigh will make what we Lib Dems must do next, easier. A disappointing result will make it more difficult. But neither will change it.

A few home truths to begin with.

We have never fought such a crucial by-election (probably no party has) against such a difficult backdrop as the last week or so – or such a painful one.

The pain comes first from the fact that our pride in ourselves has been hit. As liberals we led in the cause of equality and respect for gender and sexual orientation long before it was fashionable and often against the ridicule of the very press that now attacks us. So, to have been found wanting (and perhaps worse) in this area is excruciating to say the least.

Of course this is not just a problem confined to the Lib Dems – we live in a society which, as a whole (and in some surprising places) is having to come to terms with these issues. A wise old friend from another party said to me the other day: “We are not having as much fun at your expense as you may imagine, Paddy. We are far too busy thinking  -‘there but for the grace of God…’”. Quite so.

But there is no comfort for us in that thought. The only comfort from this painful passage of events will come at the end of the forthcoming enquiries, when we must put in place a system which will be a model for others on how we should behave in future and what should happen when we fail. No lesser outcome one will do.

Second, this has been doubly painful because it has placed in question the actions of someone who many of us had only known as an outstanding and admired servant of our Party; while at the same time, it seems, placing others we also admire in a position of pain and humiliation for which, they say, they received neither answer nor adequate redress. All justice depends on due process and this is especially so when it is our own friends and our own colleagues who stand on either side of the line between accuser and accused. There is, I fear, more pain ahead on this front and a difficult healing period to follow. But what is very clear is that we will get to the truth and through the trials ahead better, the more we do so carefully, painstakingly and within the counsels of our Party, rather than on the pages of the tabloid press.

Final point.

Having spent the last week (yes, it really is only a week!) sheltering from the fiercest of shot and shell from our enemies, it is perhaps only natural for some to believe that, if only we had done things better, it might have all turned out somehow different. It wouldn’t.

No matter what defences we had put up, no matter how we had explained ourselves, no matter how perfectly modulated our every phrase and rational our every explanation, this was a story that was going to run and run. It is important for us to recognise that, whatever the pain that has resulted for us in this process, there has been some very good, entirely legitimate and highly effective journalism from Channel 4 and many other newspapers over this affair; even if, as many now recognise, certain elements of the right wing press have deliberately pushed it in pursuit of an undisguised political agenda in advance of the Eastleigh by-election and the enactment of the Leveson proposals. None of this is to say that there are no lessons for us to learn from what has happened. There are lots. It is just to say that, even if we had achieved presentational perfection in the face of the most ravenous media feeding frenzy I have ever experienced as a Lib Dem in forty years of politics, it would have made no more than the merest scrap of difference to the outcome.

For the right wing press, this was the perfect story; the perfect storm in which they held all the thunderbolts. It rolled up in a single attack, three targets which they have long loved to hate. The Lib Dems, the Coalition and finally (and for them most deliciously) the Leveson proposals. That’s why they have devoted so many column inches, so much invective and such lip-smacking relish to the task. That was only to be expected. Fortunately in Nick Clegg, who has led our Party to government after 70 years in the wilderness, we have a leader who has shown time and again that he has the resilience and strength to ignore all this and get on with the job.

There are some times in politics – and, with no newspaper to be our bugle they come more often to Liberal Democrats than most – when you just have to stand there while the press dump ten buckets of manure over your head and still emerge, united, fighting – and as, hopefully this morning’s news will show – winning as well.

But if that’s not what this morning’s news shows, then I have say this to those in our Party who may be tempted to join the so far refreshingly non-existent headless chicken tendency, by flapping around the studios of Westminster squawking panic.  Take your lead instead from our outstanding by-election candidate Mike Thornton and the steadiness, energy and commitment of our team of mostly young Lib Dem activists who, as I write this in the last hours before the polls close, are getting on with the job of fighting the by-election of their lives (and mine) down in Eastleigh.

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The Prime Minister and the Political debate

Competence is not the only quality we hope for from our Prime Ministers. They also set the tone for our politics.

Mr Cameron seemed to understand that when he responded so sure footedly to the public mood after the uncertain outcome of the last election, working with Nick Clegg to put together a different kind of government. For many, myself included, the hope was that the Downing Street Rose Garden “love in” was not just about a new way of governing; it was also about creating a new culture of respect in the public discourse. The end of the old “dog eat dog” style of political debate that so many people find so offensive; so out of kilter with the standards they hope for everywhere else – from classroom, to football terrace, to family home. Maybe now, we hoped, our political leaders would no longer be required to hang up their brains in favour of their political cudgels before entering into the chamber of public debate.

Mr Cameron, indeed, promised just such a thing when he first became Conservative Leader and has even admitted since that he has failed to live up to his own hopes because he just “can’t help himself” when it comes to the fray.

The last few months – and especially the last week – seem to indicate that he still can’t control his urge to return to the “tooth and claw” of past practice, rather than fulfilling his promise to try for something better. The hob-nail boot remains his preferred political weapon.

The result is that, when it comes to the atmosphere of our political discourse under his Premiership, things are not just, not better; they are, arguably, much worse.

Of course we value the robust tradition of British politics. But the personalisation and bitterness of the exchanges at Prime Minster’s Questions – and beyond – is now becoming offensive and distasteful. It is also, from the Prime Minister’s point of view, most unwise. A man with basically decent instincts, he had much to gain from leading a move to a style of politics which, while just as robust, is less dependent on raw tribalism, invective and personal insult and more in tune with the nature of the Coalition Government he leads.

The slide began I think in the AV referendum. No-one is questioning the decisive result of this. It was not the outcome of the campaign, but the way it was conducted which caused the damage. Mr Cameron, under pressure from his right wingers, uttered no syllable – public or private – when Tory Party funders bankrolled a campaign, controlled by his Government’s enemies on the Labour benches and licensed to use the unrestrained hob-nailed boot in personal attacks on his own coalition partner, Nick Clegg. If, as I believe, this could have been stopped with a single word from the PM, then that was an error of taste or worse. If as he claimed, he couldn’t stop it, then it was a failure of leadership. Either way, in creating an unnecessary abrasiveness, even lingering mistrust, in relations with his coalition partners it affected the smooth running of his Government and thus placed the lowest form of politics before the proper and efficient government of the country.

This, arguably was the moment that the present unpleasant tone began to take root in the political culture over which Mr Cameron presides. It has not diminished in virulence, since.

Last week’s debate over the Benefit Cap illustrates the point. The wholesale vilification by Tory MPs and the Tory press of the Bishops for having the temerity to put forward an amendment (note; an amendment, not, as it was portrayed, “blocking” or “killing” the Bill) to the Government’s proposals was as discomfiting as it was distasteful. No doubt there are good reasons why the Bishops amendment was, in the Government’s eyes, misguided. But did these really justify holding them up to the nation for public abuse when all they were trying to do was ensure protection for vulnerable children?

Then there was the spectacle at last weeks Prime Minster’s Questions of Tory MP after Tory MP, egged on by the Prime Minister, laying into Labour for “opposing” the Benefit Cap, when they knew perfectly well that Labour favours the Cap, even if not precisely in the form the Government proposes. Peddling a lie often enough in the hope that it will be believed, may be a good propaganda technique, but it’s a rotten debating one. Over–excitement amongst Tory MP’s at having a policy which is popular and a natural desire to have it all for themselves, is not an excuse for practices which owe more to the techniques of Goebbels, than the conduct of rational debate on a serious subject.

Successive Prime Minster’s Questions have seen a further degeneration in the already depressing tone of the exchanges between Mr Cameron and Mr Milliband. Am I alone in feeling that last week, this plumbed new depths? Perhaps Mr Cameron might take a few moments off his busy schedule next week to look at the tapes and ask himself; honestly – does he think he is doing anyone any good by this? The tone; the bitter invective; the increasing use of highly personalised insults. Do he and Mr Milliband REALLY believe this is the way to win supporters? I suspect that it will have exactly the opposite effect, especially amongst the female voters they seek. Meanwhile, further damage is done to the already low standing of our politics at a most fragile moment.

Of course both men bear responsibility for this. But only one of them is Prime Minster.

Mr Cameron’s first instincts about finding a better way to conduct our political discourse were right. He needs to find his way back to them. At present the tone he tolerates from his Party and its satraps in the popular press – and too often adopts himself – is damaging both his potential and the chances of a new tone in politics which is more in tune with what most people would like to see.

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