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.

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Christine Jardine says it was a privilege to support the Assisted Dying Bill: "The debate has been for all of us MPs a harrowing experience as we welcomed into Parliament the families and friends of terminally-ill adults, who either had to live in pain, or make the heartbreaking trip to Dignitas alone to avoid the risk of their family being investigated for assisting a death."

"Nobody identified more strongly with Britain than that generation, many of whom had a picture of Queen Elizabeth II on their living-room wall. When the Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury docks in Essex, its occupants did not see themselves as 'immigrants', but citizens of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth come to help rebuild the 'mother country' after the war." Dianne Abbott found the Windrush Day reception at No 10 joyous, but it was also a reminder of the ugliness behind the 'island of strangers' rhetoric.

Grieving families are being left without answers because of an overstretched and undertrained coroner's service reports Angela Walker.

Bob Berzins makes the case for banning driven grouse shooting.

John Lanchester discusses the enormous popularity of Agatha Christie. "[Her] great talent for fictional murder is to do with her understanding of, and complete belief in, human malignity. She knew that people could hate each other, and act on their hate. Her plots are complicated, designedly so, and the backstories and red herrings involved are often ornate, but in the end, the reason one person murders another in her work comes down to avarice and/or hate."

Well before streaming and cable TV, the BBC's Moviedrome offered an accessible gateway to cinema. A quarter of a century on from its final instalment, the strand is being celebrated with a two-month season at BFI Southbank featuring some of the most significant titles from its run. Matthew Taylor talks to Alex Cox and Nick Freand Jones about their experiences working on this influential series.

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Christine Jardine believes that dying people should be able to make their own choice about whether they want palliative care or to end their life: "I would want that choice to be mine. More importantly perhaps I feel I don’t have the right to deny that choice to others. I believe the law as it stands does not offer those facing such circumstances the compassionate and humane options they deserve."

Berna León reviews a study of how Britain’s elite continues to reproduce itself through entrenched structures of privilege, despite the appearance of increased meritocracy and diversity.

"It would introduce a legal requirement for local authorities and the Department of Education to collect and publish data about the extent to which they are finding local placements for children in care ... Local authorities would also have to develop and publish sufficiency plans, setting out what steps they are taking to meet their requirements to find local homes for children in care, under the Children Act 1989." Jake Richards introduces his private member's bill.

"Rural voters stopped caring about the Democrats because the Democrats stopped caring about them." Tom Zoellner searches for solutions to the Democratic Party's "rural problem".

Mary Colwell remembers her early encounters with curlews: "I saw a large group in a field in northern Scotland as I waited for a ferry. It was autumn and they must have been migrating. I remember thinking how elegant and strange they looked with their long bills and legs, and I watched them for ages. When I reached Orkney, one flew over a loch, crying an unearthly, evocative call. It fitted the landscape and the mood of the day perfectly They were with me from then on."

"Rod Argent was the engine room of the Zombies. He wrote She’s Not There and his playing takes it to another level. It’s very English-sounding, very reserved and melancholy, then out of nowhere he plays this incredible solo that’s soulful but slightly classically influenced. It both fits the song perfectly and takes it somewhere else." Elton John on the piano and organ players who inspired him.

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Anna Tarrant praises Ed Davey's celebration of fatherhood and says we are all better off when men do more of the caring.

"Looking back to that December morning in 2019 I don't think any of us could have imagined that it would come to this. That picture of Boris Johnson, arms aloft celebrating victory, was a painful one for those of us on the opposition benches. Five years later his ejection from the scene has not saved the party whose reputation he did so much to damage, and the divisions he encouraged threaten to engulf them." Christine Jardine asks if the Tories are facing the equivalent of the Liberal party’s 1922 election disaster.

"A decade ago, the Islamic State swept through northern Iraq and declared a ‘caliphate’ and soon after launched a genocidal assault on Iraq’s Yezidi minority, murdering Yezidi men and capturing woman and girls as sex slaves. Now, six years after IS was defeated, accountability for those horrific crimes is in doubt." Deb Amos on the failure of the international community to hold anyone to account for the Yezidi genocide.

Richard Carr reviews a new book on cross-party politics in Britain since the second world war - Clegg, Cameron and all.

Meth-Addict Fish, Aggro Starlings - not heavy-metal bands but the result of pharmaceutical compounds polluting the ecosphere. Patrick Greenfield reports on a worrying trend.

Philip Cowley and Matthew Bailey offer a history of fringe parliamentary candidates: "At the Crosby by-election in 1981 [Lt Commander Bill] Boaks shared the ballot paper with Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel, although the returning officer took the understandable decision to shorten it to Tarquin Biscuitbarrel. Tarquin (original name: John Desmond Dougrez-Lewis) had his origins in a Monty Python spoof on election night coverage."

Christine Jardine calls for free postage on independent shops' online orders

The Scotsman reports an innovative policy idea from the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson Christine Jardine:

Ms Jardine wants the UK Government to cover postage for online orders from independent shops to make them more favourable destinations for present buying.

She said: "So many gift shops and retailers across Edinburgh, and elsewhere, have been hit hard by the Covid-19 restrictions and now their major market of the year could also be undermined by the competition from huge retailers who can cater for the fact that many people have to shield or are uncomfortable going into shops.

"The Chancellor has already acted once to support the hospitality industry and now we hear that there may be a second winter Eat Out to Help Out scheme, so why are we not hearing that he is going to do the same for retailers?"

Christine has won support from the national chairman of the Federation for Small Businesses for this "creative" idea.

The Scotsman quotes him as saying:

"This is going to be the most important festive season our economy has ever seen and could be make-or-break for some of our small businesses."

It's interesting that online commerce, which sounds as though it should be the nearest thing to the 'perfect competition' of the economics textbooks, has in practice led to thumping monopolies. Sooner or later government is going to have to act on this.

And being seen to support small, local businesses is good politics for the Lib Dems.

Christine Jardine makes the case for universal basic income

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Christine Jardine, Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West and the party's Treasury spokesperson, took part in a Westminster Hall debate on universal basic income.

The Lib Dems adopted the introduction of a UBI as party policy at their conference last month.

Here is part of what Christine said:

Coronavirus has changed everything. It has changed everything in much the same way—this metaphor has been used a lot—as the second world war changed everything for this society. When Beveridge put together his report in 1942, a lot of people said that it simply could not work, that it was not sensible and that the country could not afford it. What on earth was he thinking about? And yet, immediately post-war, the Labour Government set about putting that Beveridge report into action. 

What I say today is that what this country needs now is that kind of vision, and that kind of willingness to take on a challenge and to change society for the better for the next generation. It is not an opportunity that we asked for; it has come in the form of a challenge—probably the biggest challenge that any of us will face in our lifetimes. But we also have to see it as an opportunity to make progress.

Why UBI? The reason I became a convert, frankly, has been the number of phone calls and the number of people who have come to me since March this year—every day, every phone call, every person who thought they were financially secure, every person who spent decades building up a company, every person who was self-employed but now finds that they are without the support they need for the future: all that has convinced me that the only way to tackle the issue fully and to make sure that everyone gets the support they need is through a universal basic income.

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"A basic income will be the best, fairest and simplest way to safeguard the most vulnerable in society and care for those who need it." Christine Jardine writes for the Daily Mirror.

Stephen Bush reviews two books on Labour under Jeremy Corbyn.

"I’ve been threatened numerous times during the course of my career but now face a daily barrage of abuse - from being threatened with rape to personal attacks on my appearance. I live in the community I work in, as do many of our reporters. Yet we do not feel safe." Behind Local News reveals the onslaught of online abuse journalists now face.

Rachel Aldred and Anna Goodman find that the low-traffic neighbourhoods scheme implemented in outer London has led to decreased car ownership and use and to increased active travel.

"The most remarkable features of the ‘vision’, apart from a failure to mention the original purpose of the National Trust and the reasons for more than a century of bequests to it, are an insulting assessment of its public, a blithe confidence in its powers of clairvoyance, and a slick, obfuscatory jargon." Nicholas Penny is not impressed by the National Trust's new vision.

"So Andrey Tarkovsky loved Star Wars?" The director's son talks to Max Dax.

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Christine Jardine argues that the Liberal Democrats should not hurry to elect a new leader.

"I have long argued that Labour members should ban the words 'Tory voters' from their vocabulary. If you start from the premise that someone a Tory voter is who someone is, rather than voting Tory being something they have done, you write them off as a potential vote for Labour." Emma Burnell makes a simple suggestion.

Stephen Parsons analyses why the Church of England is unable to respond adequately to revelations of abuse by its clergy.

Sarah Manavis examines the strange case of Paul Zimmer, the social media star who came back as a different person

"The ECB has a history of chasing golden geese. Remember how they courted Allen Stanford before the Texan billionaire was behind bars for fraud and the Indian Premier League had stolen a march on creating a T20 league that still dominates the domestic calendar. That disappointment still haunts a number of people at ECB HQ and hopefully The Hundred is not a delayed reaction built on jealousy rather than solid strategy." James Buttler believes The Hundred is a gamble that cricket does not have to take.

Jonathan Rowson says the challenge of chess - learning how to hold complexity in mind and still make good decisions - is also the challenge of life.

I am voting for Mark Pack as Lib Dem president

Liberal Democrat members will have received an email giving them details of how to vote online in the party's internal elections. The polls close at 5pm on Friday 8 November.

So many people tried to vote this morning that the system fell over, so I have decided to wait until things calm down.

When they do, I shall be voting for Mark Pack as party president.

Because:

• I have known him since the glory days of Lib Dem blogging.
• He knows the party inside out.
• He is a strong organiser and campaigner.
• Along with David Howarth, he has pushed for the party to build a core of liberal supporters rather than try to be all things to all people. (Simon Titley was calling for this back in 2004.)

And there is one negative reason:

• Christine Jardine is an impressive MP, but I have never believed that party president is a job for an MP.

Details of Vince Cable's Lib Dem 'supporter' scheme published

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When Vince Cable first  proposed allowing people to register as Liberal Democrat 'supporters' I
wrote that it reminded me of the more relaxed arrangements that prevailed in the old Liberal Party.

Active local parties naturally acquired a wider circle of people who wished them well but did not wish to join.

For that reason, I find it hard to get too concerned about the idea. Though the decision to allow people to register as potential supporters before the new status has been endorsed by the party's democratic machinery is a pretty blatant attempt to bounce members in to accepting it.

The details of the scheme that will be put to the party's spring conference in York have now been published:

Registered supporters will have regular contact with the Federal Party about news and campaigns and invitations from local parties to events and campaigning activities. (Local parties will have access to their details to contact them, just as with members.) 

Supporters will be able to attend conferences in a non-voting capacity and will be consulted on campaign issues and policy ideas (separate from member consultations). If approved at the Spring conference in York, they will also be eligible to vote for the leader of the party, subject to further requirements and protections. 

Members will continue to be the only ones to decide party policy and governance, vote at conference, serve on party committees and as party officers, select party candidates and stand for election to Parliament, devolved bodies and local councils.

The "further requirements" surrounding the right to vote in leadership elections are set out in detail, but I do wonder if we are not being a little naive in this age of Boaty McBoatface.

If you want to read an enthusiast for the scheme, try Christine Jardine on Liberal Democrat Voice.

No doubt she will be the first of many MPs to write enthusiastic articles about it there.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Well thought of in Golspie

Our week at Bonkers Hall draws to a close as the old boy proves that he still has his finger on the pulse when it comes to the Liberal Democrats (as far as we have one these days).

Sunday

There are those (it is hard to credit) to whom not every Liberal Democrat MP is a household name, so let me give you a few notes upon the slightly less famous ones.

Wera Hobhouse is heir to the family fortune, which is founded on sales of her uncle L.T.’s Liberalism.

Christine Jardine I have found to be a fierce competitor. She once took over the captaincy of my XI when Mike Brearley was called away to conduct an urgent session of psychoanalysis, whereupon she packed the legside field and ordered our fastest bowler to let the batsmen have a barrage of snoot-high deliveries.

Jamie Stone is believed to be well thought of in Golspie.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week

• The Beast from the East
• Stilton Man
• Jo Swinson gives Humphrys one up the snoot
• "Dance, Frog Man, dance"
• Gay conversion camps
• Meet Pop Corbyn

Lord Bonkers' Diary: “Why can’t we have a woman as leader?"

When I read this I am reminded that Lord Bonkers was a great supporter of women's suffrage. (But then the first Lady Bonkers would have taken a pretty dim view if he hadn't been.)

Wednesday

“Why can’t we have a woman as leader?” came a question after I spoke at a local Liberal Democrat dinner this evening. I replied that, while I am attracted to the idea, you must first find a woman who is willing to stand. “At one time,” I went on, “we would have engineered a by-election in a safe Liberal seat and got the Wise Woman of Wing to Westminster. She would certainly make a good leader – being Terribly Wise and so forth.” Such matters are not so simply arranged these days, not least because there are no safe Liberal seats any more.

Jo "Gloria" Swinson has ruled herself out this time, settling for the deputy leadership and what she fondly imagines will be a shoo-in next time. Well, we shall see, but "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley," as the former Somerset wicketkeeper Neil Burns once remarked to me.

So instead we must look to our new female Members. Wera Hobhouse is no doubt a relation of my old friend L.T. Hobhouse, with whose latest every young Liberal could once be found curled up. If you want someone Terribly Clever, she’s your girl. Then there is Christine Jardine, who must be a relation of Douglas Jardine, the great England captain from the Bodyline series. His strategy, based upon the insight that Donald Bradman did not like it up the snoot, brought the Ashes home. We could do with similar generalship today.

My eye, however, has fallen upon Layla Morgan – so much so that I have written a song about her on the banjulele. It goes something like this:

Layla,
You've got me on my knees, Layla.
Rumpty tumpty tum, Layla.
Darling won't you ease my worried mind?

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

• The inside story of the fall of Tim Farron
• How Matron keeps herself in gin

BuzzFeed News does its best to end the Liberal Democrat leadership election

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Vince Cable is standing for the Liberal Democrat leadership and, as far as we know, he is the only one of our MPs who is.

Jim Waterson from BuzzFeed News reckons there are still four Lib Dem MPs who have not formally ruled themselves out. So he set out to discover their intentions.

Stephen Lloyd was clear:

He immediately ruled himself out: "I'm for the wisdom and sagacity of Vince Cable."

So was Jamie Stone:

"Absolutely not. I'm lucky to here at all in the first place and I'm a strong support of Vince's."

And so was Christine Jardine:

"No," she explained. "It would have been good to have a contest but on the other hand I'm perfectly happy."

The only slight mystery surrounds Layla Moran's intentions:

Moran, the new MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, had written a piece offering to nominate any MP who wanted to prompt a leadership contest but had not formally ruled herself out. 

So is she running? "Not as far as I'm aware," said the person manning the phone in her office.

I'm with Christine Jardine. It would have been good to have a contest.

But what we really need is a frank debate about the recent past and the future of the Liberal Democrats, and it is quite possible to have a leadership contest without having that. Stephen Bush has discussed this in the New Statesman.

Besides, a leadership contest, by my calculation, requires a minimum of two candidates and we do not seem to have that luxury.

Layla Moran would make an attractive candidate, even if - inevitably - we do not know a great deal about her views. But I suspect she would be wise not to stand this time.

So we are left with Jim Waterson's conclusion that we should declare Vince Cable our leader and go on holiday.