Lynne Featherstone

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.

Well – there’s been a little flurry just now of interesting and weighty blog postings on the issue of equality – and whether it shows up a clear ideological difference between the two Liberal Democrat leadership candidates.

Rob Knight over on Liberal Review (good to see Rob starting up blogging again!) has the latest piece in this exchange.

I don’t agree with all his points but I do think he’s right to highlight the question of how much we should worry about equlaity of outcome as opposed to equality of opportunity.

This was a major theme of my speech to the party’s spring conference rally last year:

We first need a clear picture of what makes for a more liberal society. Only if we put such a picture in people’s minds, so that they know instinctively what we stand for – without having to be shown a list of nice, but apparently unconnected policy proposals – will we succeed in making a substantial leap forward in numbers of seats and political power …

For me, the recipe is a fairer society. And what I really mean by that is a more equal society. Because more equality – not absolute equality, but more equality – is needed for society to be fairer – and better …

So I want Liberal Democrats to be the party of fairness, which means the party of equality – including a more redistributive tax system, public services geared to the needs of the poor and inarticulate, industrial democracy, so that workers have a genuine say, and a government framework that supports, rather than undermines, community coherence.

And the reason I believe this? Read the speech to find out!

Leadership hustings at the RSA (Royal Society of Arts) with Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg going head to head. Both were good – obviously – but! Nick started really well with his speech – doing what he does best – and trying to charm the birds right out of the streets with homely examples of real life Nick experiences. Very good stuff. Chris’s speech was tougher and more real – and he delivered it with gusto. Full of real experience and good personal examples himself.

Needless to say there was a lot of common ground and agreement – but differences occurred. Before I get onto those however, I noted that Nick was claiming credit for the Freedom Bill or The Great Repeal Act. But actually – that was one of Chris’s four big ideas during the last leadership contest. Credit to Nick for being willing to run with the idea so well, but credit where credit’s due for the original idea!

But it was the questions – that in my opinion – separated the men from the boys – so to speak. There were two key areas where I felt Chris outshone Nick. One was in overall tone and content of response. Chris is clearly able to think on his feet and come up with really brilliant answers and not waffle. Nick reverts to the safety zone of talking about things like Home Affairs (his brief) when he isn’t sure of what answer to give. Nick was more touchy-feely – without question – but Chris is learning feely-touchy – but with steel and with substance.

The real test came just at the end when the boys were asked about Trident. Nick spoke first and nonsensically in my view as he said he wouldn’t for one moment consider a unilateralist point of view – he was a multilateralist. But he was trying to imply that Chris was unilateralist – which he isn’t. So a bit of edginess there.

Nick then takes the straight party line and tries to rubbish Chris (whose stand on Trident had been covered in the press a lot). Chris then speaks and sets out exactly, clearly and coherently what position he takes on Trident which is that in the end, and dependent on the outcome of the multi-lateral disarmament talks in 2010, it is inconceivable that we would need to replace Trident in exact form and at the gargantuan cost of billions and billions.

Chris’s argument is that Trident was developed before 1989 in a world where the name of the game was nuclear and the stand off between the super powers ruled the world. Since the end of the Cold War and the advent of rogue states and terrorism – the rules of the game have changed.

Anyway – then it got heated as Nick interrupted and tried to attack Chris’s position. Well – bet he wished he hadn’t as Chris’s response to the attacks showed the steel of which he is made – not only absolutely confident in content but delivered with absolute authority. That was an excellent joust!

So – we launched Chris Huhne‘s Manifesto for Leadership at noon today. It went really, really, well! And it was radical and called ‘The Liberal Revolution’ – which is exactly what is needed!

Chris excelled at questions – and the media as ever were naughty. They seemed to want to trap Chris into saying things about Nick – derogatory things – but Chris neatly sidestepped. He was very gung ho responding to questions on his Trident position, on his People’s Veto; on being marched off to prison for refusing to have an ID card and so on. Exciting stuff!

Chris Huhne et al presented our nominations to the Returning Officer at Cowley Street this afternoon. So – Chris is now officially candidate!

Over a hundred constituencies formed the base of the nominations. More to follow I guess as we are way ahead of the deadline of 31st.

Momentum is gathering and we are getting phenomenal support across the land. The media make much of the number of MPs supporting each candidate and Nick is ahead on those numbers – but hey – this is the Lib Dems! One member one vote – and they are all equally important. And outside of the Westminster bubble – there are also other key members of the Lib Dems – the Welsh and London Assemblies, the MEPs and the Scottish Parliament.

On the leadership trail – the Independent gave Chris a quizzing today with their “You ask the questions” profile of Chris Huhne