Lynne Featherstone

Stirring words from Chris Huhne in today’s Guardian:

… On climate change too, Labour is conspicuous by its conservatism. Carbon emissions are up, green taxes down. Climate change research has been cut. Firms have been let off reporting their environmental impact. Road freight tolling was vetoed. Flood defences were cut last year. The climate change bill sets a target lower than the science demands. None of this will meet the greatest challenge of our times …

For the country’s sake, the Liberal Democrats need to get back a sense of anti-establishment insurgency. With Labour and the Tories scrabbling over the same ground, we must set out a programme of radical change that can give back hope and trust to the millions excluded from the political system. Without trust in the process, progressive politics is dead. Only the Liberal Democrats have the vision to revive a movement of conscience and reform.

The full piece is here.

A double dose of Liberal Democrat leadership candidate Chris Huhne in the Daily Telegraph. There’s a Q+A session in the paper, plus also this filmed interview:

PS And especially for one Lib Dem blogger I’ve counted up the words in some of his answers and can report that he gave three fourteen word answers, a twelve word answer, a four word answer and a one word one too!

I’ve commented before on how I suspect that issues around equality (is promoting equality of opportunity enough? or do we need more emphasis on delivering greater equality of outcome?) is one of the key philosophical differences between Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg.

Don’t get me wrong – I think both their beliefs sit more happily in the same party than plenty of pairs of Labour or Conservative MPs and their beliefs that I can think of! But I think there are some real differences here.

All of which is a long introduction to saying – Chris has a piece today over on Comment is Free:

The level of inequality in this country is a scandal. In Britain today, the strongest indicator of life expectancy is social class. The strongest indicator of children’s chances at school is their parents’ income: as early as age three, children from disadvantaged families lag a full year behind their middle class contemporaries. The chance of someone born into a low income group of moving into a higher group as an adult is lower now that it was 50 years ago.

Liberal Democrats don’t tend to talk about equality as much as we champion liberty. But in reality we can’t separate the two. The extent of inequality is now so large that it is a serious restriction on freedom – and for all of us, not only those at the bottom of the income and wealth ladder.

Not surprisingly – I agree! Because as I said on an earlier occasion:

Your educational chances are strongly correlated to your social class – setting the prospects for children even before they reach school. In health too, inequalities are still increasing. Ever since the publication of the Black Report twenty-five years ago, it’s been well known that inequalities in people’s health are directly related to inequalities in income and wealth. That’s why Greece, with half the average wealth per person of the US, actually has a longer average life expectancy. And in Iraq – after ten years of sanctions, with war ravaged infrastructure and continuing violence – has an average male life expectancy that is 8 years higher than that of the Calton area of Glasgow. The explanation? Inequalities in wealth again.

In fact, a whole host of studies across different countries have consistently shown that not just in terms of education and health, but also in terms of crime, social respect, trust and participation – the outcomes are linked to the degrees of inequality in wealth and income.

An error by Chris’s office led to a real argument on the Politics Show. A document entitled ‘Calamity Clegg‘ was thrust into Chris’s face. It was a briefing document – but clearly the title was totally unacceptable. Chris looked shocked as he clearly hadn’t seen it before. But it heralded some testy exchanges between the two.

Since the program, there is an apology from Chris’s office up on the website:

An Apology on Behalf of the Chris Huhne Campaign Team
On behalf of Chris Huhne’s campaign, I sincerely apologise that a background briefing document of quotations from Nick Clegg on public services reform and proportional representation was sent out with a wholly inappropriate title. There is no excuse for this. The document title had not been approved before the document was sent out and neither Chris nor I were aware of it. In no way does the title of the document as sent to the Politics Show represent Chris Huhne’s opinion and he completely dissociates himself from it.

Chris believes that there is no place for personal criticism in a legitimate contest – but that showing a lack of clarity or inconsistency is permissible. He is therefore seeking permission from the returning officer to put the document in the public domain under the amended title “Nick Clegg in the media on public services reform and proportional representation.”

All team members have now been reminded of the absolute need both to refrain from any personal attacks and to obtain sign off on all documents.
Anna Werrin, Campaign Manager

1. Chris has picked up two more high-profile supporters in the Liberal Democrat leadership race – former Party President Navnit Dholakia and Oxford West & Abingdon MP Evan Harris.

2. Chris has also pretty much swept the board with previously undecided Lib Dem bloggers – five out of the five who have since blogged about the Question Time debate say that he came off best, as did three pro-Clegg bloggers – but there’s not been any traffic the other way. (Full details in Stephen Tall’s piece on Liberal Democrat Voice).

Welcome news from Scotland in the LibDem leadership contest: a majority of the Liberal Democrat’s MSPs – ten out of sixteen – are backing Chris Huhne.

Here are some of their quotes from our MSPs about Chris:

Mike Rumbles, Aberdeenshire West and Kincardine: “He is the only senior Liberal Democrat who seems to fully understand that devolution doesn’t stop with Scotland and Wales but needs to be extended to England too.”

Robert Brown, Glasgow: “His belief in building power from the bottom up will go down particularly well in Scotland.”

Margaret Smith, Edinburgh West: “I believe Chris has the ideas to revitalise not only our party, but British politics generally.”

As for last night’s Question Time – I think both Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg were good, but Chris was better – particularly in the first half.

I believe we need to be a radical alternative to the cosy consensus of Labour and Tories. I don’t want the same old same old. There is no point in that. And I think Chris can best deliver that! That’s why I went for him in the first place. Of course you might expect me to say that! – but pleased too to see that overall balance of comments on Liberal Democrat Voice was that Chris was the best.

Glad to see that Chris Huhne has made it quite clear in a news release that when the show comes to town in the form of the Olympics, the right to peaceful protest must be upheld:

The Olympics are a chance to put our values in the global showcase which is why the organisers should plan for and allow the right of peaceful protest, which is such an important part of our political tradition. It will not be on display at the Beijing Olympics.
Diversity and freedom of expression is what has always made our society strong, and we should not be afraid to show it.

And I suspect given the number of countries competing whose human rights record may not be quite what we would wish – there will be quite a number of protesters wishing to protest. A good thing too. As a country – we should be proud that peaceful protest is one of our guarantees of freedom of expression.

That’s something that won’t be the case in Beijing and it might not be the case here judging from the Labour Government’s desire to stop all forms of freedom of expression and protest – even when it is just reading out the names of the war dead!

Still – now Chris has thrown down the gauntlet on it – will Nick follow suit? There was a pattern last time round of Chris leading the way on issues – troops out of Iraq, the environment, etc – where he proposed a radical policy, others weren’t so keen – but in the end, it was Chris’s radical position that won the day.

That’s why I like about leadership contests – they push each candidate on and as a party we end up with a better set of policies as a result. Hurrah!

This time round hopefully the issue of the right to protest will become a key point for our party. And then we can also shame the Government into doing the right thing.

Not surprisingly, the Liberal Democrats’ track-record on environment issues during Chris Huhne‘s time as our environment spokesman has come into the spotlight during the leadership election. That’s fair enough – judging people by their track-records. So how does Chris stack up?

Well – on the substance, very well – the Green Tax Switch policies were overwhelmingly supported by party conference and then set the standard which the other parties have slowly – achingly slowly – tried to emulate. And the Green Tax Switch campaign, including the week of street stalls around the country (watch my YouTube film here), was a great return to trying to running joined up national and local integrated campaigns.

But what about the impact on the public – have they noticed? Here’s what the MORI-IPSOS polls have been saying over the last few years. The graph shows how many people were saying they would vote Liberal Democrat at a general election – and also how many rated the Lib Dems the best party to tackle environmental issues:

Note that sharp increase in our environmental ratings at the end of the graph – the period when Chris has been our environment spokesman. After years of flat ratings, we finally bucked the trend after he started up in the post – and despite working against a background of our party ratings overall falling back a bit.

Of course, on all of these, people other than Chris deserve credit too. But he was the one leading the way – just as our next leader will work with others but also need to lead the way themselves.

Jonathan Calder’s got a very insightful piece over on his Liberal England blog about how the Nick-Chris dynamics are playing out through the Liberal Democrat leadership election. Well worth a read!

Yesterday Chris did an in-depth interview with a group of Liberal Democrat bloggers (no, not including me!) about his leadership bid. There’s been a flurry of posts as a result – and Mary Reid’s write-up also includes links to them all.

It looks like the bloggers managed to tease out some interesting answers (and no, I’m not of the control freak tendency where “interesting” = “best avoided” = “blunder”!) – so well worth a read.