"We have blue passports, but everything else has gone south": Andrew George on the failure of Brexit

Andrew George won back the St Ives constituency in Cornwall for the Liberal Democrats two years ago today – he had previously represented it between 1997 and 2015. 

It's estimated that there was a 54.8 per cent vote for Leave in St Ives at the 2016 referendum, but that hasn't stopped Andrew telling it like it is in the Bude & Stratton Post:

There’s been much commentary on the 10th anniversary of Brexit referendum. I viewed it as a test of UK self-confidence. In the event the answer was negative. That we didn’t see ourselves as leaders in Europe. That we believed we were being taken advantage of, and had become rule-takers and had lost control.

That’s not to say I believed there would be no benefits from Brexit. I acknowledged at the time there was potential to "take back control" of fisheries management and marine conservation. However, even that hasn't materialised. Indeed, it's worse – we’re now outside the rooms where decisions are made and have less influence.

Yes, we have blue passports(!), but everything else has gone south. All authoritative sources agree the economy has suffered; now estimated to be at least six per cent smaller than it would have been. Brexit has been a drag on trade and growth, seen a cut in investment, and opportunities – especially for younger people – have shrunk.

Cornwall has been a major loser after decades of EU support. Promises of replacement funding didn’t materialise. I respect those who voted to Leave, and their hopes and desires. But those who led the Brexit campaign should stand up and be accountable. Their lies and stoking of fear may have succeeded, but they it says everything that they have largely avoided public attention during this 10-year review.

Andrew George is the member for the Isles of Scilly

It's not just Scottish MPs who worry about island ferries: Andrew George's St Ives constituency, as well as the far west of Cornwall, takes in the Isles of Scilly, which are 28 miles off the Cornish coast.

In this latest Cornish Times column, the Liberal Democrat MP reports a meeting with the transport minister Keir Mather: 

He says he wants to help. I’ve invited him to visit, to help him better understand the challenges islanders face, and then help ensure sustainable solutions are found. Scilly may be an exceptional place. But it’s also a tough place to survive, especially if you’re not well off.

He then adds pointedly:

Two-thirds of all income to the primary provider of transport to Scottish islands (CalMac) is government subsidy. In comparison Scillonian passengers, freight customers and inter-island travellers pay unsubsidised full commercial rates. No government has yet offered parity for the Isles of Scilly.

Andrew also reports that he is calling a Special Educational Needs summit next year:

I’m keen to listen, and to work with local families to ensure children get the support they deserve.

And writing of falling immigration figures, he says:

The real worry across many sectors – including agriculture and care work here in Cornwall is how we will cope with the politically driven fall in migrant workers. But of course, no leading politician dares mention this.

The belligerent youths are back: The sacking of Christine Jardine

When Christine Jardine was sacked as the Liberal Democrats' spokesperson Women and Equalities and on Scotland, some bright spark briefed the press that:

"We are not in the business of dancing to the tune of the Conservatives through symbolic votes and virtue signalling."

Simon Titley used to talk of the "belligerent youths" who surrounded Nick Clegg. Judging by that statement, they're back under Ed Davey.

Christine Jardine was universally regarded as an effective front-bench spokesperson, and to lose her over what has been called "an arcane procedural matter" - she voted against an appalling Conservative amendment she had been told to abstain on - is poor leadership.

Nor was her vote a matter of "virtue signalling", for reasons she explained in her dignified resignation letter:

As you know, my late husband Calum, was bipolar. Several people around me have mental health conditions the amendment dismissed as ‘minor’, and not worthy of support. I could not in good conscience do anything other than vote against another Conservative attempt to remove help from those who need it the most. Regardless of my personal circumstances, as Equalities Spokesperson, this is an equalities issue and I could not let down those who are relying on people in power to speak on their behalf. The expression of support I have had from members of the public, the membership and members across the House, has reassured me the choice I made was right, and I am content with that.

Some of the other Liberal Democrat MPs who voted against the amendment will have had equally personal reasons for doing so. There were eight: Lee Dillon, Andrew George, Rachel Gilmour, Tom Gordon, Wera Hobhouse, Freddie van Mierlo, Manuela Perteghella and Cameron Thomas.

I do wonder why it was so important for the Liberal Democrats not to be seen to oppose punitive action against people who are sick or have a foreign national in the family. Are their plans to change party policy in an unwelcome direction? 

I've no idea, but already I hear of rumblings of discontent in the parliamentary party and in constituency parties over Christine's sacking.

And to the belligerent youth who briefed the press about "virtue signalling"... 

The Conservatives are His Majesty's Opposition. They're meant to have some influence over the agenda of the Commons. If they had a halfway-competent leader, they would have rather more.

Andrew George reflects on 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence

In his column for The Voice, Andrew George (Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives) writes:

The annual international campaign to end violence against women and girls kicks off on November 25 - “16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence” - running till December 10, Human Rights Day.

I’ve reflected on my (small) role supporting the early days of Penzance Women's Aid, and creation of first refuge, 33 years ago! It’s provided essential, lifesaving and enhancing protection for women and their families fleeing domestic violence ever since. 

What caused me to reflect was the realisation that I had been wrong. Wrong, in that I had then naively believed we were on a progressive path where, in time, there’d be no need for such organisations. If anything, the problem is worse.

Andrew George on Labour's housing policy and why it won't work

It's clear that Andrew George, Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives again after nine years, has little time for the idea that if only developers weren't encumbered by the planning laws they would flood the market with so many new houses that prices would come down.

He writes for the Cornish Voice newspaper:

Having tracked the way the housing market works in places like Cornwall over recent decades, it seems clear that development tracks house price inflation and slows when the market stagnates. 

Higher housebuilding targets are reflected in higher hope values land adjoining every community around Cornwall; land value speculators sit on those sites until planning permission granted enables a maximisation of development value and undermines the viability of affordable developments suitable to meet local need.

Cornwall doesn’t have a major problem with NIMBYs resisting development. Cornwall has been the one of the fastest growing places in the United Kingdom – nearly trebling its housing stock in the last 60 years – and yet the housing problems of local people have got worse. 

Housebuilding targets are a means to an end. The intended purpose is to meet housing need. Yet, in Cornwall, this is one of the best examples of how that policy completely fails.

The late Ian Jack explained why it fails in the London Review of Books five years ago, with a little help from Oliver Letwin:

A report in the Times last year showed that out of more than 1.7 million applications for residential planning permission granted between 2006 and 2014, fewer than half had been completed after three years. According to the Local Government Association in 2016, councils consistently approved more than 80 per cent of major residential planning applications; but the difference between the number of houses being approved and those actually being built was almost 500,000 – ‘and this gap is increasing.’ 

The hardly radical figure of Oliver Letwin identified the real brake on house-building when he published the interim conclusions to his inquiry into low completion rates last year. What governed the numbers, he decided, was the absorption rate – "the rate at which newly constructed homes can be sold into (or are believed by the house-builder to be able to be sold successfully into) the local market without materially disturbing the market price". 

For ‘materially disturbing’ read ‘lowering’: to protect profits, developers are sitting on land that has been given planning permission. ‘Efficiency’ in this instance is a concept confined to the shareholder.

All of which means that the Lib Dems' emphasis on building social housing - seen in the motion passed at last year's autumn conference but less evident in this year's manifesto - must be taken on by the government if they are to fulfil their ambitions.

I should add that everyone I talk to who knows about housing says there is an endemic shortage of the relevant skilled labour in Britain. This too must be tackled by government if its housing policies are to succeed.

Stuntwatch: Promise of final-week "big surprises" from Ed Davey

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Chloe Keedy from ITV News filed a report from Yellow Hammer 1, Ed Davey's election battle bus, as it began a final five-day tour of Liberal Democrat prospects from John o' Groats to Land’s End.

John o' Groats is in Jamie Stone's Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross constituency, which is nominally an SNP seat under the new boundaries.

Land's End is in the St Ives constituency, which Andrew George hopes to regain for the Lib Dems.

And there are many promising seats in between.

And the really hot news from Yellow Hammer 1? Keedy writes:

On the campaign trail in Edinburgh on Saturday, Sir Ed Davey was trying out his circus skills.

There may only be a few days to go, but I’m told that the Lib Dems’ stuntman-in-chief still has a couple of big surprises up his sleeve.

Andrew George to stand for Cornwall Council

Andrew George, who was the Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives between 1997 and 2015, is to stand for Cornwall Council in May local elections.

Cornish Stuff reports that he is to contest the new seat of Heamoor, Gulval, Ludgvan, Zennor, Morvah and Madron.

One of his opponents will be the Conservative who sat for the previous ward that covered much of this part of West Penwith.

Cornwall is currently run by a coalition of Lib Dems and Independents, though the Conservatives are the largest party on the council.

GUEST POST Time for the Lib Dems to learn from social democracy

To revive their fortunes the Liberal Democrats need to focus on issues like  health, education and housing, argues George Kendall.

The authors of the 2019 election review have done an excellent job, courageously speaking uncomfortable truths.

Their most important point is that talking about what we like to talk about "has come at the expense of constantly thinking about what ‘normal’ people care about and building everything we do around trying to help."

The party’s Social Democrat Group has issued a statement to welcome this review. In it the group says:

To reconnect with many of the voters we have lost, we need to start talking about our social democratic values. To do that, our leadership needs to help the party reconnect with this too often forgotten half of our party’s founding heritage.

This is important, not just because it will help us electorally. Caring about what people think and being champions for their concerns is something we should do regardless of the electoral benefits.

Liberals are often very concerned about these issues too, and our manifesto contains excellent polices that are designed to reduce poverty, but other issues have taken more of our energy. Europe is not the only example.

A notorious example was during the Coalition, when we persuaded Osborne and Cameron to support a 5p charge on plastic bags in return for tightening benefit sanctions. In the end, the benefits sanctions were not tightened, but how was that deal ever considered? I fear it came from a belief that Lib Dem members cared more about charging for plastic bags than preventing a harsher benefit regime. Nor was it just the Coalition.

In some parts of the party, there is passionate debate about a sugar tax, both for and against. Issues like this are not unimportant, but surely we should divert some of this passion to improving the education of people from disadvantaged areas or the growing crisis of a lack of affordable housing.

This lack of passion on issues that concern the most vulnerable and the less affluent parts of the country has had an impact on our image.

Part of the problem may be that liberalism means different things to different people. Many Liberals work hard to understand and champion the concerns of those who are not affluent, but not all.

The Financial Times has described Osborne as "metropolitan and socially liberal”, yet George Osborne was responsible for draconian cuts to welfare immediately after the Tories won a majority in 2015.

I think the solution is to remember that we are not just liberals and our values are not just Liberal. We were formed as an equal partnership of liberals and social democrats, and our values and policies are deeply informed by social democratic thinking.

Inherent in social democracy is a concern about issues like health, education and housing. If we start to think of our party as being both liberal and social democratic, we will not be able to stop thinking about these issues. As we do so, we will start to care more about them, and that passion will come over to the electorate.

But being passionate about these issues is not enough. If we just use these issues as an argument to push an agenda we already believe in, we may fall into the trap of paternalism. Responding to their concerns involves more than designing policies we think will help. It would be only too easy to adopt a policy that affluent liberals like, but is despised by those it is intended to help. We also need to listen.

There are many barriers to our achieving this change. Our membership is now heavily skewed towards the affluent areas of the county. The same is true of our parliamentary party. Changing will be hard.

To fix this all of us need to make a deliberate effort to listen to the parts of the party that are not affluent and are not London and the South East. If the people we follow are predominately university educated, we should try to break out of our groupthink by following people and organisations that are engaged with those who are not.

Virus permitting, we should knock on doors in a nearby council estate outside an election period, to listen carefully to their concerns and their reaction to our polices. We should also listen to and give prominence to new groups like Liberal Democrats for the Heart of England and the Northern Liberal Network.

And we should listen more to people who have done the hard yards and have campaigned over many years for less affluent parts of the country. People like Andrew George in Cornwall and my colleague in the Social Democrat Group, Michael Mullaney, in the Midlands.

If you would like to help the Social Democrat Group in our work on this, do join us. You don’t need to think of yourself as a social democrat: iust as a Lib Dem who wants to help make the party more passionate about the needs of the less affluent parts of the country.

 George Kendall is acting chair of the Social Democrat Group. He writes in a personal capacity.

Andrew George: Still campaigning in West Cornwall

Andrew George, who was Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives from 1997 to 2015, is still campaigning hard.

His website says:

The Conservatives may have successfully clung onto this seat at the last General Election with a narrow majority. But there’s a growing campaign team of people who will fight for those the Conservatives can never speak up for. The struggling majority, the inadequately housed, our NHS, our schools and colleges, small businesses and the self employed, those who care for our environment. 

Andrew George has vowed “not to walk away”. You can join a growing campaign team. We’re determined to win this seat back at the next General Election, to make a big difference, to change the direction of this country for the better.

Today the website Cornish Stuff quotes him crossing swords with St Ives' current Conservative MP:

“Since the 2015 General Election Liberal Democrats have not been there to ensure the Conservatives honoured the previously agreed financial support for the post office. If the Government continues as it has done since 2015 we’ll lose many more much valued local post offices.”

It would be good to see Andrew back in the Commons. He was always one of the more interesting Lib Dem MPs/

Tim Farron on the stump in Cornwall

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Laura Silver from BuzzFeed has been following Tim Farron on the campaign trail in Cornwall:

Amplifying doubts about Brexit could be a pivotal strategy for Farron and his party. [Andrew] George, the Lib Dem parliamentary candidate, wants to tell the Brexit-supporting fishing industry that the likes of Nigel Farage played a “cruel hoax” on them by suggesting there would no longer be quotas on the number of fish that could be caught if Britain left the EU, or that foreign boats could be banished from British waters. 

“It’s the equivalent of putting it on the side of a red campaign bus. It’s as honest as that,” he added. 

Johnny, a fisherman BuzzFeed News met in Padstow who preferred to not give his surname, said he voted Leave but that his perspective could be shifting as he fears the fishing industry had been “sold up the river”.

Elsewhere she finds Tim Farron's low media profile (almost inevitable in a new leader) and the aftermath of coalition as barriers to votes returning to the Liberal Democrats.

Nick Clegg in Penzance

© Philip Halling

Andy McSmith's Diary in the Independent is always worth a read. In his latest column he notes Nick Clegg's absence from the Commons:

Today he was in Penzance, to announce a £150,000 study into whether the town needs a new breakwater. "I’ve spent four years dutifully sitting there on the green benches and this year I thought it would be a nice change to get out of the Westminster," he told the Western Morning News. Penzance is in the St Ives constituency, which the Liberal Democrat Andrew George held in 2010 by a perilously small majority. 

So Clegg was really telling the locals that if they want that breakwater, they had better re-elect their MP.

Andrew George and Michael Moore take top two places in ballot for private members bills

The Parliament website has the results of today's ballot for private members bills. The top two places in the draw were taken by Liberal Democrat MPs: Andrew George was first and Michael Moore second.

Altogether there were five Lib Dems among the twenty names drawn. Sarah Teather was at no. 7, John Hemming at 16 and Martin Horwood at 20.

As the website says, the ballot presents an opportunity to be one of the first MPs to introduce a private members bill in this parliamentary session and may mean guaranteed debating time for the bill on a Friday sitting of the House.

Liberal Democrat rebellion over local government funding

George Eaton on the New Statesman's The Staggers blog picks up on the rebellion by several Liberal Democrat MPs last night:

Largely unnoticed, there was a small but significant Lib Dem rebellion over cuts to local government last night. Party president Tim Farron, former defence minister Nick Harvey, Andrew George, Stephen Gilbert and Adrian Sanders all voted against this year's funding settlement.

He goes on to quote Nick Harvey's speech in the debate:

The whole model of local Government funding is now so fundamentally broken that there needs to be a cross-party endeavour to rebuild something from scratch on a blank sheet of paper.

Nick went on to say:

Devon county council is now consulting about a programme of cuts that will end all its non-statutory obligations: ending the subsidy on meals on wheels; closing its day centres; getting rid of all its residential care homes; axing mobile libraries and the smaller local libraries; and doing away with the youth service, except for young offenders. This will cause absolute fury on the part of voters. I do not think that it is acceptable. 

We have people moving into our area who are aghast at the low level of public services that they find in comparison with other parts of the country that they have come from. This is just not acceptable. It cannot go on like this. I made a speech similar to this last year. I told Ministers that they needed to do something about it if they wanted my support in the Lobby. A year has gone by, they have done nothing about it and they will not have my support in the Lobby this evening.

You can read his whole speech on They Work for You - which is a much better site than the Hansard one, incidentally. As Nick says, there is an element of cynical calculation here. The government hopes that is local authorities who will be blamed for these cuts.

Blogging about the proposal for a unitary council for Leicestershire the other day, I made similar points:

In pursuing austerity the Coalition has tended to protect central government programmes while hitting local spending hard - there is money for HS2 while local bus services are cut. 

The danger is that local government services - and here the very structure of local government - will be damaged so severely that they will be impossible to repair when the public finances are healthy again.

I think this is a huge problem for the Lib Dems. For as long as anyone can remember, we have presented ourselves as the champions of local government. Yet when given a chance of power we embrace a policy that sees local government funding slashed.

There is plenty about localism in the Coalition agreement: it is just that it has been ignored ever since.

As I have said before, that agreement reads more and more like the portrait of a government that Britain needed but did not get. The blame for this lies largely with David Cameron - too weak to take on his own backbenchers - but it is the Lib Dems who are being punished for it by the voters.

Dawlish and the case for a new rail route to Plymouth

Photograph by Martin Bodman

The loss of the sea wall at Dawlish, and with the Great Western mainline to Plymouth and Cornwall, should not come as a surprise.

It has long been known that this stretch of track is vulnerable to storms and that climate change will only make the situation worse.

As a result there has been interest in the idea of reopening the old London & South Western route from Exeter to Plymouth via Okehampton and Tavistock. Stretches of the line is still in use at either end.

In 2010 Andrew George, the Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives in Cornwall, said:

"If the assessment is the problems on the line [through Dawlish] are overwhelming then it would be sensible to plan for the future," he said. 

"When you contrast the amount of money – the billions – spent on major improvements to services in the north to south, it would be quite wrong to leave Plymouth and Cornwall cut off if that were to happen in the next century."

The same newspaper report quotes a Network Rail spokesman as saying that any thoughts of a re-routing of trains around Dawlish were "wishful thinking". Perhaps the idea does not seem so foolish today.

Still, the spokesman was on the ball in one respect:

Funding to improve the line through the Somerset Levels, which is also prone to flooding, was a more attractive option, he said.

Six of the Best 336

Andrew George is trying to establish a badger vaccine project in West Cornwall to help cattle farmers with the continuing and growing problem of Bovine TB.

"The party leadership were very unhappy about the antics of their youth wing, and party leader Jeremy Thorpe set up a three-man commission which produced the Terrell Report. The report accused some of the Young Liberals of being communists." Birkdale Focus on a forgotten episode in Liberal Party history.

We need a new consultation on the Communications Data Bill – more commonly (and fairly accurately) known as the 'Snoopers’ Charter' - which is due to re-emerge at any moment, says Paul Bernal.

"The full brutality of the collapse of revenues at local newspapers was exposed in the announcement of preliminary results for 2012 by Johnston Press earlier this week," reports former Leicester Mercury editor Keith Perch.

Spitalfields Life celebrates the cats of the East End.

Matt Prior is the best wicketkeeper-batsman-diplomat in the world, according to Pavilion Opinions.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Black George

Black George

The remote cove’s name turns out to be Black George. He signals to me to come outside, and we wander out into the Cornish countryside until there is no danger of our being overheard. I am told of the suffering of his people and am surprised to learn that even the most respectable of them are involved in the fight against the Pasty Tax.

“Be on yonder cliff tonight with a dark lantern, a pistol and a cutlass and ye shall meet Squire Rogerson and Parson Gilbert.”

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Cornish adventure

• "Better than a chimbley!"
• The remote cove

Banks and supermarkets: Two good issues for Liberal Democrats

Coalition or no coalition, I am all in favour of the Liberal Democrats challenging what the government is doing. It's just that I do not always think we choose the right issues.

The rebellion on the Health & Social Care Bill, for instance, seemed chiefly aimed at involving NHS professionals other than GPs in the proposed new structures. This was sensible as far as it went, but it was a long way from the sort of democratic reform of the NHS the party should be championing.

And the other week Politics Home reported that the Social Liberal Forum will be turning its attentions to education, with a demand that the governing bodies of free schools and academies should include community representatives.

I would support this, even if I do suspect that some of those behind the idea don't really want to see free schools and academies at all. I am liberal enough to believe that wider participation need not proved a brake upon innovation.

But I have deeper worries about these campaigns on health and education. They essentially involve defending the position of public-sector professionals, a group who are already well represented in our politics. I would like to see the Liberal Democrats showing more awareness of the interests of the wider public, which are not always the same as those of professionals.

And above all, there is something almost amusing about a party that has been out of power for around 90 years devoting its campaigning energies to what sometimes amounts to not much more than defending the status quo.

So what can Liberal Democrats campaign to change? Yesterday's Observer supplies two good issues.

The first is taking on the banks, and the Observer suggests that this is already underway:

Senior Liberal Democrats are demanding drastic action to break up UK banks into separate retail and investment divisions, as banking reform threatens to cause a new rift in the coalition.

In a letter to the Observer on the eve of the deadline for industry groups to respond to a government-commissioned report on reform, peers, MPs and senior figures in the national party insist that chancellor George Osborne's suggested approach falls short of what is needed.

The Lib Dems join a list of more than 50 politicians, academics and economists to demand that the party honours its commitments – most recently made at its spring conference – to achieve a full breakup.

The Lib Dem signatories of the letter are Adrian Sanders, Lord Trevor Smith, Linda Jack, Richard Grayson and Stephen Knight.

In the end this is a technical issue: if George Osborne's more limited reforms were likely to work, then there would be no reason not to accept them. But if there is any doubt, and there does appear to be considerable doubt, we cannot run the risk of having to bail out the banks again and must press for more substantial measures.

And, of course, being seen to take on the bankers would be good politics for the Liberal Democrats.

The second issue is the power of the supermarkets, again the subject of an article in yesterdays Observer. The article by Alex Renton reinforces the impression that today's supermarket barons have become the union barons of the 1970s. They have become over mighty and the government must take action to curb them.

Andrew George is one of the politicians who have taken up this issue, and it is one connects our concerns for the environment and local enterprise too. It is one we should campaign on more vigorously in future.

If the Liberal Democrats campaign to change the banks and supermarkets, and show a little less concern for opposing change elsewhere, then we will have earned the label that we too often use as a vague term of approval - "radical".

Thoughts on the Lib Dem leadership's defeat on health

I am pretty much a Lib Dem loyalist these days, even if my membership of the Liberator collective still alarms some of the party's great and good.

But I was pleased to see the leadership defeated in the health debate in Sheffield today. Nick Clegg's statement after the vote - "Yes to reform of the NHS. But no to privatisation of the NHS" - is fine with me. And if the movers of the amendment were simply defending professional interests or the status quo, I would not support them.

For me the key point against the government plan for the NHS was made in an article by Andrew George in this morning's Indpendent:

It hands extensive powers, and most of the NHS budget, to a narrow group of private contractors – GPs, some of whom are horrified at being turned into NHS managers.

Exactly so.

Incidentally, I don't find the point that these plans were not included in the Lib Dem manifesto or even the Coalition agreement quite as damning as the proposers of the motion expect us to. It is early days, but being in government throws up all sorts of unforeseeable events and problems. Governing cannot be a Bennite process of implementing a previously agreed programme come what may.

Nor do I have an instinctive dislike of private providers in the NHS. But there must be democratic oversight of health. That surely is the point Liberals should insist on.

More on the Daily Telegraph and Lib Dem MPs' expenses

Let me see. The Telegraph fingers Andrew George, Nick Clegg, Menzies Campbell, Chris Huhne, Lembit Opik and Julia Goldsworthy.

Lembit, it seems:

charged taxpayers for a £40 court summons he received for the non-payment of his council tax. He will refund it.

Bless.

House Points: The future of fishing

My House Points column from today's Liberal Democrat News.

Kettles of fish

MPs assembled the other day for a great Commons occasion. Not the pre-budget report but the annual debate on fisheries. It featured a figure that this column has become obsessed with over the years: the Minister for Fish. Last Thursday there was a new one in plaice: Huw Irranca-Davies.

Hansard calls him the "Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs," but we know what that really means.

It is always an important debate for members with fishing interests in their constituencies, and many of them are Liberal Democrats. Alan Beith, Alan Reid, Andrew George and Alistair Carmichael all took part. Even Ming Campbell lowered his sights from the finer points of international diplomacy to plead for the lobster fishermen of Pittenweem.

The history of the fishing industry is a tragedy. The apparently endless bounty of the oceans has been all but exhausted by overfishing. This has inevitably led to regulation, but the absurdities of centrally imposed rules lead to fish being thrown back dead because it is illegal to land them.

Most MPs called for more local regulation of fishing. Though some may dream of a return to a free-for-all, for most this was just a wish for more sensible regulation.

Others will point out that fishing is now regulated by the EU via its Common Fisheries Policy and wonder if their industry was uppermost in Edward Heath’s mind when he negotiated Britain’s entry. It is easy to imagine an allegorical painting entitled The Sacrifice of Poseidon to Europa. In it Heath lies chubbily naked on a bed of haddock with his arm around the neck of a bull… Just me, then.

Perhaps there is a parallel with the pre-budget report after all. The seemingly bottomless sea of credit has also been fished out. Individual voters now realise they will have to pay back every penny they have borrowed, and their debts are no longer being made to look insignificant by rising house prices.

In this light Alistair Darling’s cut in the rate of VAT looks very like a red herring. And soon we will have to find the money to pay for it too.

No cormorants were harmed in the writing of this column.