George Osborne first and 10 (whatever that means)

Last week the Guardian told us:

George Osborne wants to have an NFL franchise based permanently in London within the next five years to confirm the city’s status as the “sporting capital of the world”. 

The chancellor met with NFL executives, team owners and former players at Downing Street as the Miami Dolphins prepared to face the New York Jets at Wembley stadium on Sunday. 

Osborne said he would “love to have a team here based in the UK playing in the NFL” and he believed Britain was making steps towards that goal. “The real prize, the real touchdown for London, would be to get a team based here,” he said.

My first reaction is that Osborne should have more important things to do with his time. Bringing an NFL franchise to London is the sort of task that should consume a wacky backbencher, not the chancellor.

But this enthusiasm of his does confirm that he is not a traditional Conservative. If he were, he would be worrying about how to persuade more children to take up rugby or cricket,

To someone of Osborne's cast of mind, America is the future. His enthusiasm for elected mayors, a role unknown in British local government until recently, confirms this.

As I argued in a recent post on a cricket club in David Cameron's constituency, this sets Osborne apart from his prime minister.

But already this enthusiasm for all things American looks dated.

For the group of Tories who produced Britannia Unchained - Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore, Liz Truss - the future is Singapore.

And for the former Liberal Democrat MP Jeremy Browne in his Race Plan, the future is China. That dictatorship makes an odd beacon for 'authentic liberalism'.

Still, Jeremy is not alone. Today Jeremy Hunt expressed the hope that, thanks to cuts in welfare, we would all have to work as hard as the Chinese.

Who knows where the future will pop up next?

What the defeated Lib Dem MPs are doing now

View image | gettyimages.com

Total Politics has caught up with the career moves of some of the Liberal Democrat MPs who lost their seats in May.

David Laws is now executive chairman of the think tank CentreForum and Steve Webb is now director of policy and external communications at Royal London, the mutual insurance and pensions company.

Other MPs have relaunched themselves as consultants. Total Politics lists Jeremy Browne (who stood down before the election) among them, but a recent report in City AM had him working as a lobbyist for the City of London in Brussels.

I once blogged about the fate of defeated MPs:

The plight of former MPs is not one to attract public sympathy, but they can have a hard time. In a Guardian article in 2004 Michael White quoted Joe Ashton: 

"It's not like losing your job in a factory, when everyone loses their job and rallies round. You may be living in a rural area, no contacts, no way to keep in touch. You can be lonely and isolated, your kids may be slagged off at school or even taken out of private school if you're a Tory. If you claim benefit the local paper gets to hear about it." 

And White went on to say: 

When Labour was defeated in 1979, 38 ex-MPs had not found a job after a year. In 1997 it was the Tories' turn: 126 lost their seats. Familiar stories of depression and drink, debt and divorce, began circulating.

Today you can find the Association of Former MPs on the Politics Home website.

Norman Baker "accomplished more in one year ... than most people do in their entire career"

Ian Dunt gets it spectacularly right on politics,co.uk.

First on Norman Baker's achievements in his year at the Home Office:

Baker accomplished more in one year in the Home Office than most people do in their entire career. Baker went into the Home Office as the Liberal Democrat's man. He performed that task with aplomb, forcing through an international study of drug policy - an investigation long-resisted by the department because it suspected it would show its policy caused harm. ...

Baker fought the battle over that report behind the scenes for months. The department refused to publish it. The civil servants involved in writing it were blocked from making any recommendations on the basis of their findings by the prime minister. The establishment is terrified of any accurate assessment of British drug laws. 

Baker eventually succeeded in forcing publication. It was arguably the most important government drugs report for a generation. It found that half a century of drugs policy was mistaken. Harsh drug penalties do nothing to reduce drug use, but they do significantly reduce the health of drug users. 

Against a hostile media, dogmatic Labour and Tory MPs, and a hugely bureaucratic department, he had scored a significant victory. It will be mentioned as a key moment in the drug debate when, a decade or two from now, Britain finally adopts a more liberal policy.

One might add that Norman was highly regarded in his time as a transport minister too. And, as the video above shows, he sings too.

Second, he is right about the silly attacks on Norman today:

The attacks on Norman Baker could almost have been pre-written. As soon as his resignation was announced, his critics reminded everyone of his weakness for conspiracy theories. Videos of his band were circulated, mockingly. Others focused on the fact no-one outside the Westminster bubble knew who he was, which is true for pretty much all ministers. And there was criticism of his admittedly theatrical astonishment at the fact the Home Office does not proceed on the basis of evidence.

Among those making the attacks are the Guardian - though note the supportive comments from readers and and even a Lib Dem blogger.

And Dunt is most right of all when he contrasts the reputations of Norman Baker and Jeremy Browne.

I am too much of a party loyalist to quote what he says about Jeremy, but the moral he draws is spot on:

And yet Browne was treated almost like an elder statesman when he left the Home Office. And therein lies the key to media treatment of politicians: Look vaguely presentable and don't rock the boat – they'll treat you like a sage. But fight for radical policy and they consider you an embarrassment. 

Baker accomplished more than most ministers one can care to think of. It is entirely unsurprising that he is now a subject for mockery.

My suspicion is that the worlds of politics and political journalism are now so dominated by the products of public schools and Oxbridge that they find the idea of someone from outside playing a role ridiculous.

Local councillor seeks Lib Dem nomination for Taunton Deane

Liberal Democrat councillor Ross Henley is to seek nomination as the party's next parliamentary candidate for Taunton Deane, reports the Around Wellington website.

This, of course, is the Lib Dem seat to be vacated at the next general election by Jeremy "There is a world beyond politics full of opportunities and it will be exciting to explore it" Browne.

So farewell then Jeremy Browne

#56250580 / gettyimages.com

"By 2015 I will have been the Member of Parliament for Taunton Deane for ten years. That is generally long enough to do the same job. 

"It is not my ambition to remain in Parliament until I retire. I have been very committed to the role and I have done it to the best of my ability. It is time to do something different. 

"There is a world beyond politics full of opportunities and it will be exciting to explore it."

I do wonder what the chair of Taunton Deane Liberal Democrats made of Jeremy Browne's resignation letter. I suspect Jeremy's excitement about his own future was the not the chair's first concern.

But I am sorry to see Jeremy stand down and wish him well for the future. The Liberal Democrats need their Whigs as well as their Radicals (as Donnachadh McCarthy used to say), and Jeremy was one of the more interesting figures on the right of the party.

He has even published two books this year, though I have to say his blend of turbo-capitalism and National Efficiency in Race Plan did not do it for me. And it was positively odd for him to claim that such an idiosyncratic view of the world constituted "authentic liberalism".

I suspect Jeremy still feels hard done by because of his sacking as a minister. As I argued last year, he was unlucky to be moved from the Foreign Office, where he at least seemed at home, as part of what I suspected was a deal to get David Laws back into front-line politics.

But on the whole, I think he has been lucky in the press he has received, The Conservatives have consistently said warm things about him, presumably in the hope of getting him to join them.

Here is Nick Boles tweeting today as an example:

So the last proper liberal announces he is leaving the LibDems. The modern Conservative Party is the true home for Gladstone's heirs.
— Nick Boles (@NickBolesMP) October 15, 2014

It seems Boles has not received the memo about flattering the protectionist instincts of Ukip and its supporters.

But the left has been complimentary too. Here is George Eaton in the New Statesman:

In appearance and ideology, Browne is as far from the Lib Dems’ beard-and-sandals brigade as it is possible to be. With his crisp suits and gleaming shoes, it’s easier to imagine him in the boardroom of JPMorgan than canvassing in a wet by-election.

But Jeremy's career has taken him nowhere near Wall Street. What Eaton is saying is that Jeremy has a public-school accent and wears good suits.

I suspect that tells us more about the state of British politics (or about George Eaton of the New Statesman) than it does about Jeremy Browne.

Six of the Best 467

"The broad contours of Browne’s argument are that we now live in “The Liberal Age” and that the Liberal Democrats are the only party with the instincts to deliver the policy needed to meet the challenges of that age. He offers the argument under five headings: freedom, opportunity, decentralisation, sustainability, and globalisation. He arrives at his conclusion via the construction of a platoon of straw men." Alex's Archives reviews Jeremy Browne's new book.

Stephen Tall meets a Glasgow taxi driver.

Tiffany Jenkins argues that our museums and art galleries are now too child-centred.

In the late 1940s the White House was in such poor shape that it had to be gutted and practically rebuilt. National Journal has some photographs of that process.

"At points over the last 10 weeks, entering the name “Mary” in some search engines has resulted in the mother of Christ coming second to Mary Berry, the female judge on The Great British Bake Off." Mark Lawson on the nation's favourite programme.

"'John Barleycorn Must Die' is a perfect album, it’s got only six songs, three per side, and you never lament its length, when it finishes you just play it again." Lefsetz Letter listens to Traffic's great LP.

Interviewing Tim Farron at the Social Liberal Forum conference

Listening to Tim Farron’s Beveridge Memorial Lecture at the Social Liberal Forum (SLF) conference yesterday – the New Statesman has reproduced the full text – I was puzzling to work out who he reminded me of.

Then I worked it out.

Take this passage:

So, while the right argument for HS2 is about capacity not speed, the argument for HS3, 4, 5, 6 is about speed. A high speed link between Hull and Liverpool, through Leeds, Bradford and Manchester; from the West Country, from East Anglia to the Midlands, from Wales to the Midlands and the north, from Carlisle to Newcastle; connecting our great towns and cities to one another; connecting East and West as quickly and as seamlessly as we connect north and south, that is where our focus must be and we must start right away. 

It could almost be a passage from Jeremy Browne’s Race Plan – Britain needs modernising and massive spending on infrastructure is the way to achieve it.

It is reassuring to find leading figures of the economic and social liberal wings of the party sounding so similar, but there is an important difference here.

Jeremy is very much a London-as-a-world-city man, whereas at the heart of Tim’s analysis of Britain’s problems is that too much spending and wealth is concentrated in the South East of England.

Talking to him afterwards – in a bloggers’ interview kindly arranged by the Social Liberal Forum – he sees this concentration as being at the heart of the current housing crisis. There is plenty of land and even plenty of houses available outside the South East, it’s just that not enough people want to live there.

With massive spending on railways and broadband and regional airports we can stimulate development in the regions and take the pressure of the South East.

It’s not just investment that Tim wants to see for the regions: he also wants to see devolution of political power. In the interview – the other bloggers there were Mathew Hulbert, Caron Lindsay, Joe Otten, Mark Pack and Iain Brodie Brown – we discussed how this might be achieved. Should we go for devolution to regions or accept the more pragmatic solution of using existing cities and counties?

I asked Tim if he would be happy with neighbouring counties having different education systems. My reason for asking this was that, looking for somewhere quiet to work over the lunch break, I inadvertently found myself in a fringe meeting on education, called to launch a pamphlet by Helen Flynn, where Tim happened to be the guest speaker.

It was something of a celebration of the fall of Michael Gove and its heroine was the head teacher of Barrowford Primary School for her rather toe-curling letter. And, fairly or not, I gained the impression that those present had no great love of diversity in education.

When I asked Tim the question during his interview he said he would be happy to see different systems in different counties, but I am not sure his heart was in it. Still, he did make the important point that Michael Gove’s most far-reaching and questionable changes have been made in teacher training, not at the margins with free schools.

If I had been Jeremy Paxman, my first question about the speech would have been: “This is a leadership bid, isn’t it?” I am not sure how fair that would have been, but it was certainly how many members of the Social Liberal Forum saw it, jumping up to give him a standing ovation.

As to my own views, back in 2011 I wrote of him:

He is clearly a formidable campaigner, having turned Westmorland and Lonsdale into what looked very like a safe Liberal Democrat seat until the Boundary Commission got hold of it. He is young and personable, and he has other attributes that may be useful to someone standing for the leadership of the party in the future. He is Northern, did not go to public school and has not held ministerial office under the Coalition. 

So my feeling is that we should take Tim Farron very seriously. 

I still think we should, even if his oratory yesterday was not that impressive. Too many important lines were swallowed or thrown away. And he did not make the unpopular speech that I went on to ask for in that post.

Still, in singling out the way London dominates our national life Tim has identified an issue that is too little remarked and put himself on the right side of the debate.

It is also an issue that marks him out within the party and could mark out the party as a whole in a future election.

Jeremy Browne explains the Global Race

Or perhaps it is Tony Blair explaining the principles of New Labour.

How are Norman Baker and Simon Hughes faring as ministers?

The two Liberal Democrat ministers were dispatched to the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice by Nick Clegg with the instruction to make the liberal voice heard more clearly, says Nigel Morris in the Independent.

How is it going?

For Mr Baker it means trying to assert himself with a Secretary of State famed for her work ethic, attention to detail – and occasional reluctance to delegate. He has amassed a wide-ranging brief that brings in crime reduction, tackling violence against women, reducing animal experiments and gun licensing. 

After an initial wariness, the pair have built a mutual respect and Mr Baker has achieved a higher profile than his predecessor, Jeremy Browne, who found himself isolated. 

Mr Hughes has only been at the MoJ less than five months and has spoken of his determination to boost diversity in the legal profession and cut the number of women in prison. 

The outside observer might imagine there is precious little meeting of minds with Chris Grayling. But the Tory Secretary of State’s hawkish language belies a strong commitment to rehabilitation shared with his Lib Dem minister.

Is Jeremy Browne winning the local race?

Yesterday Oliver Wright visited Taunton for the Independent and came away reasonably confident that Jeremy Browne can hold the seat for the Liberal Democrats at the next election:

While political pundits predict an electoral defenestration of Lib Dem MPs next May it doesn’t quite feel like that on the ground. What matters to people in Taunton is having an MP with face and name recognition and a reputation for turning up at events, dealing with local issues and knowing the area inside out.

And he goes on to observe:

In looking at the Lib Dem prospects for 2015, it has to be remembered that they won in constituencies like Taunton despite the fact that the party nationally was very unlikely to be in Government. Its strength was having good constituency MPs who were able hold seats by not merely capitalising on protest votes but by using the position to actively fight for the people they represented.

It is also good to see Jeremy setting his beloved global race aside and working hard on local problems - problems where setting market forces loose is not always the solution.

"The Global Race": Bad politics, bad economics

Jeremy Browne, reports Liberal Democrat Voice, has published his book. Race Plan: An authentic liberal plan to get Britain fit for 'The Global Race'. It has been issued by the free-market think thank Reform.

I am pleased to see a prominent Lib Dem producing a book - there should be more of them - and the party's ideology is so nebulous that it is hard to accuse any of us of heresy.

But there are two things that make we worry.

The first is the publisher. I did subscribe to Reform's e-bulletin for a while, but did not get on with it. Its answer to every question was the same: cut taxes, cut spending, privatise.

It was not so much that the bulletin was wrong: it was that it was not interesting.

Still, Jeremy's book may be an exception to Reform's usual output.

But I am not hopeful. "The Global Race"?

I wrote a post back in September of last year quoting a couple of commentators who thought the concept was pretty worthless.

In particular, I quoted Philip Booth from the equally free-market Institute of Economic Affairs and the more left-leaning American economist Robert Reich, via a Guardian article by Andy Beckett:

"Economists don't think of trade as a race in any way," says Booth. "The world economy is not a zero-sum game. Countries get richer together. If China carries on reforming and growing, there will be more opportunities there for Britain." Reich agrees: "The race needn't [mean that] every country's citizens lose ground, but some lose more than others … or [that] some can gain only at the expense of others … We can all grow, and at the same time spread prosperity to more people."

Nor is "The Global Race" a novel concept. Back in February 2013 Isabel Hardman told us:

The Cabinet met this morning to discuss the content of the next Queen’s Speech. The ministers present were told that legislation for the next session would focus on supporting the government’s priorities of ‘economic competitiveness’ and Britain’s position in the ‘global race’ (there we go), and ‘aspirations and fairness’. 

CCHQ staffers have already told me they’re sick of the phrase, which probably means it’s only just percolated as far as Portcullis House, so expect to hear it coming out too far and too fast from ministers’ mouths over the next few months.

The problem is not even that "The Global Race" is a Conservative concept. It is redolent of the sort of reborn public-school values that have dominated British public life since Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party 20 years ago.

I shall buy Race Plan - I may even read it - but I do not expect to be inspired by it. Still, I may have a pleasant surprise.

Jeremy Browne is right to question Lib Dem enthusiasm for further tax cuts

Sooner or later Labour governments run into a paradox. The more ambitious their spending plans get, the more they have to tax the very people those plans are intended to help.

So I was happy to support the Liberal Democrat policy of significantly raising the tax threshold to take a lot of poorer people out of the system altogether. And pleased to see the Coalition put the policy into effect so that people do not pay tax on the first £10,000.

Now the Lib Dems and the Conservatives are engaged into a contest to raise the personal allowance even further.

As Huffington Post reports it:

Clegg has said he would like to see the income tax threshold raised to £10,500, worth £100 a year to basic-rate taxpayers. 

The deputy prime minister has said his ambition is to eventually raise the rate even further so no one pays any tax on the equivalent of the minimum wage, which would work out at a threshold of around £12,500. 

And Lib Dem chief secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander said it would be a "top priority" of the party to "raise the personal allowance dramatically" in the next parliament - suggesting it would be a red line for the Lib Dems in any coalition negotiation.

But hold on. The setting up of the Coalition was predicated on the need for unprecedented austerity. If we can't afford to maintain public spending at levels that Liberal Democrats would like, how come we can afford further substantial tax cuts?

That Huffington Post article quotes Jeremy Browne on the subject:

Browne said he was "slightly unnerved" by the "Dutch auction" at the last Lib Dem and Conservative conferences where the two parties traded off policies. 

"The Conservatives promised extra money for a marriage tax break and the Lib Dems promised to spend extra money on giving free school meals to all infant school aged children," he said.                         

"The message I find that sends is there is money to splash around and I think it's a difficult message to send at the same time when you told the electorate that educational maintenance allowance or child benefit for taxpayers above a certain threshold is unaffordable." He added: "We still have a big deficit by any standard, just because it's less colossal than before doesn't mean its not still big." Browne said there was a "tendency of all parties to start getting ready to do the giveaways before there is anything to actually give away."

My feeling is that Nick Clegg's support for further tax cuts is driven by politics rather than economics. He hopes that the Lib Dems will be identified in the public mind with these cuts and reasons that the more of them there are, the more popular we shall be.

But, like Jeremy Browne, I wonder whether there is any economic justification for these cuts at a time when public debt it still growing.

Perhaps unlike Jeremy, if there is scope for reigning back on austerity then I would rather see the funding of local services - the sort we have always taken for granted, like buses and museums and libraries - given priority.

That is, after all, what people thought they were voting for when they voted for our councillors and for our candidates at the last election.

Thanks to Lib Dem Voice for putting me on to this article. Incidentally, their picture of Jeremy Browne' is much better than Huffington Post's because he has a beard.

The press misses a big story in Nick Clegg: The Liberal Who Came to Power

I have just listened to the second part of Steve Richards' Radio 4 documentary Nick Clegg: The Liberal Who Came to Power.

The press coverage beforehand concentrated on Jeremy Browne's opposition to the idea of selling ourselves as the party of the centre and on Shirley Williams observation that Nick likes to surround himself with young people, not all of whom are particularly competent - Simon Titley's belligerent youths.

I agree with both, but Shirley Williams said something else important that the pre-broadcast coverage missed.

She said that Nick Clegg has a low opinion of the House of Lords.

I was talking to a peer in London the other week - as one does - and was told that relations between Nick and the Lib Dem group in the Lords are not good. The peers feel they are required to do a lot of hard work to improve the poor (and often illiberal) legislation the Commons sends to them and do not get the recognition from Nick that they deserve.

This poor feeling between Nick and the Lords, I was told, in part explains the poisonous progress of the Rennard affair. Many Lib Dem peers are inclined to stand by one of their own because of it.

Whoever you vote for the political class gets in

Nick Boles's idea of a National Liberal Party is, of course, a nonsense. As the Continuing SDP and the Pro-European Conservatives demonstrated, you cannot establish a successful political party from above. And if Boles is seeking to attract those Liberal Democrat members who think that Nick Clegg is too left wing, I hope he has not booked to large a hall.

What is behind the idea is surely an attempt to allow a few Liberal Democrat MPs - it may be significant that in his speech Boles praised both Jeremy Browne and David Laws by name - to join the Conservatives by stealth.

At the next general election they would hold their seats with the help of Conservative votes, beating the new Liberal Democrat candidate. When the National Liberal party folded a year or two later, they could quietly and regretfully join the Tories.

Stephen Tall (and sometimes this blog feels like a dialogue with him) has an article on Liberal Democrat Voice, where he tentatively reaches a tamer version of the same conclusion.

What interests me is what he goes on to say:

It’s a shame because there is an interesting speech to be made about the prospects for a National Liberal party, one which brings together the Orange Bookers, the Blairites and the Cameroons. There would be disagreements over civil liberties, but on the economy, public services, the environment and Europe they would have more in common with each other than with their current parties. Tribal loyalties, combined with our stultifying electoral system which inhibits new parties, means such an alliance is unlikely to come to pass.

To which I say is thank goodness for tribal loyalties.

Because this natural seeming confluence between large parts of the three main parties is based less on shared ideology than on a shared social background.

These days mainstream politicians are overwhelmingly likely to come from the same wealthy middle-class families, to have been to the same limited range of schools and universities, to have worked as special advisers (and perhaps in a more lucrative career  and then to have been selected to fight winnable seats.

The are all light on ideology and tend to buy in their policies from charities and think tanks. Their shared enthusiasm for "evidence-based policy" disguises a tacit, unexamined agreement about the nature of the problems we face. Where is the evidence-based policy for reducing income inequality, for instance?

I can see the idea of a party of sensible, moderate party that would unite people of good will and stay in power for ever will attract some politicos - especially exhausted Liberal Democrats. But the idea of institutionalising this social exclusivity and political timidity does not attract me.

Is the pejorative term "tribalism" - of which Liberal Democrat were accused in the 1990s when we stubbornly and unaccountably refused to join Labour when Tony Blair was so wonderful - just another way of describing what little distinctive thinking British parties still possess?

The strange politics of Nick Clegg's speech on free schools

Independent schools do not have to teach the national curriculum and are free to hire people who are not qualified teachers.

They do not seem to do so badly on it, but Nick Clegg is determined that these freedoms shall not be extended to schools in the state sector. In saying this Nick is, as Stephen Tall points out, championing Liberal Democrat, but that does not mean he is right.

Because there is an odd contradiction here. The national curriculum was brought in by the Conservatives in the 1980s because they did not believe teachers could be trusted. Lazy. Marxist agitators. That sort of thing.

This seemed to me at the time, and still does, a massively centralising measure that Liberal should oppose/

Yes, all children should be taught to read and all sorts of other things, but almost all teachers would agree with that. And if they don't there are all sorts of mechanisms like school governors and Ofsted to force them to toe the line.

But if you really don't trust teachers and want a national curriculum, why would you give those same teachers a monopoly in schools?

And three quick points on the politics of Nick's speech, which he will not me making until Thursday - today's papers must have set some sort of a record for reporting something that has not yet happened:

1. this move is another illustration of the truth that if you set out to be a centre party you will always be against radical change;
2. it is a clear attempt too woo Labour, right down to adopting their silly charge that Gove's reforms are "ideological" - we all have an ideology;
3. in recent days Nick has shafted probably his two strongest supporters among his senior MPs: Jeremy Browne and David Laws. Good luck, Nick.

David Heath and Jeremy Browne were victims of an earlier reshuffle

I was pleased to see Norman Baker moved to the Home Office in the recent Lib Dem reshuffle. And I note that many of those poking fun at his book on the death of Dr David Kelly – step forward Jonathan Freedland and John Rentoul – are Blairite armchair warriors seeking to refight the invasion of Iraq.

But I do feel sorry for Jeremy Browne, who was sacked to make way for Norman Baker. Because in the previous reshuffle, which took place in September 2012, he was moved from the Foreign Office. And he had given every appearance of being at home there, which he never did at the Home Office.

And Jeremy Browne was not the only Lib Dem who was moved from a job where he was at home to one where he was not in that reshuffle and then sacked this week.

David Heath was by all accounts a success as deputy Leader of the House and, as ‘a good House of Commons man’, he certainly looked happy in the role.

But in September of last year he was moved to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. 

Fair enough for a rural MP, you may say, but he was given the worst hospital pass of all time and was made the minister for shooting badgers. I don't think anyone could be happy in that role.

Now Dan Rogerson has been appointed to DEFRA in his place. I don’t know if he now has responsibilities for the badger cull – it is possible that they have moved the goalposts.

That September 2012 was not just a misfortune for these individual ministers: it was a misfortune for the Liberal Democrats as a whole. Because, despite everything, I like my party being in government and I was sorry to see us giving up any representation in important, grown-up departments like Defence and the Foreign Office.

Why did we do this? The theory heard most often is that Nick Clegg was so anxious to secure the return of David Laws that he was forced to concede a lot of ground in return.

I hope this is true. If Nick gave that ground of his own free will we really should be worrying.

Jeremy Browne, Norman Baker and the Home Office

One of the political arts is to be all things to all people. John Major made it all the way to Prime Minister because the moderate Conservatives were convinced he was one of them and the Thatcherites were equally convinced that the opposite was true.

What John Major's career also shows is that people who have mastered this art may find their luck running out one day.

Which brings me to Jeremy Browne. Because a lot of people are upset at his demise today.

Benedict Brogan, blogging for the Daily Telegraph, is distraught:

Mr Browne was one of the successes of the Lib Dem end of the Coalition, and an exemplar of the party's seriousness in government. His sacking is baffling, but not nearly as baffling as his replacement by Mr Baker.

So is John Rentoul, blogging for the Independent. To him, Jeremy Browne is "a Blairite reformer".

Quite why Jeremy has won these rave reviews I am not sure. It is hard to point to any achievements from his time in government.

True he seemed at home at the Foreign Office, but then as Stephen Tall said earlier today, "unless you accidentally start a war I’m not sure what the criteria for a bad stint are".

I suspect that Jeremy is a victim of Nick Clegg's last major reshuffle when he had to make concessions to David Cameron to ensure the return of David Laws, and giving up a Lib Dem presence in the Foreign Office was one of them. Call it Nick Harvey Syndrome.

Perhaps the moral is that pointed by Stumbling and Mumbling the other day. Quoting Adam Smith, he said we have "a disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful".

In short, if you wear a good suit and look well brought up then people will assume you are a good minister even in the absence of any tangible achievement.

If, like Norman Baker, you are cutter from rougher cloth it will be harder to win that reputation. Yet everything I hear about him suggests that he is a competent minister and highly thought of by those he works with.

Perhaps there is a Lib Dem inferiority complex at work here. Yes, it is great to be a campaigner like Norman Baker, we reason, but when it comes to being a minister and to leading the party, we think we need someone more like Jeremy Browne.

Some will question Norman's conspiracy theories about the death of David Kelly. To that, I would merely point out that in an age of Prism and Tempora, it is the state that is paranoid not its citizens.

I am pleased to see Norman Baker at the Home Office and wish him well.

Jeremy Browne enters the global race

Earlier this week I praised an article by Andy Beckett that dissected that new cliché of Conservative ministers' speech, 'the global race. As he wrote:

This race, we are told, is economic. Our opponents are usually specified: the rising countries of Asia and South America such as China, India and Brazil. Yet the prize is vaguely and promiscuously defined: "jobs", "wealth", "growth", "trade", "talent", "technology", "skills", "capital", "competitiveness", "big ideas", "influence", "innovation", "investment", "investment opportunities", "recovery". 

Meanwhile the race is invoked to justify seemingly any government goal or policy: bigger British arms sales abroad and smaller school holidays; tighter immigration controls and looser planning laws; the lavish high-speed rail project HS2 and a leaner Whitehall; harder GCSEs and better childcare; reducing social security and reforming the European Union; promoting the renewable energy industry and the redevelopment of Battersea power station; even dignifying Cameron's recent visit to Kazakhstan.

So I was sorry to see our own Jeremy Browne making free with the concept in a piece for the Spectator website.

Jeremy tells us that "how Britain can best be a contender in the global race, is the biggest fact of life in politics today".

That "everything this government is doing is about making Britain viable contenders in the global race. Our very future depends on it".

And that: "It is not like a school sports day in a Labour-run council where everyone is obliged to go at the pace of the slowest participant. This is the global race."

We need to develop some proper Liberal Democrat clichés for Jeremy to use. Then he won't have to write articles that make him sound indistinguishable from the Conservatives.

Jeremy Browne speaks out

Here is Jeremy Browne, quoted on his own website, speaking out earlier today:

“Taunton Flower Show is one of the great events in the Somerset social calendar. It seems to be getting bigger and better every year. I enjoyed the vast range of stalls this year, including the high number of arts and crafts stands. The main flower displays continue to be spectacular. Organising the Taunton Flower Show is an enormous task and the volunteers deserve huge credit for putting together such a fantastic event.”

That's very interesting, Jez, buy what we'd really like to know is your view on this week's immigration spot checks.

You are a Home Office minister, after all.

STOP PRESS: Jeremy Browne praises Quantock Brewery.

Is this why there are no Liberal Democrat defence ministers?

Last week the Defence Secretary Philip Hammond expressed surprise that the Liberal Democrats did not want to have a defence minister.

Though this Daily Telegraph interview suggested that Hammond is no fount of original ideas, he may be on to something here.

Because Nick Harvey's departure from the Ministry of Defence was not the only disappointing thing for Liberal Democrats about the last cabinet reshuffle. We also lost our hold on the Foreign Office when Jeremy Browne was moved to the Home Office. I, for one, was pleased and proud that we had Lib Dem ministers in these two important ministries.

Meanwhile David Heath, who was ideally placed as Deputy Leader of the House, received the ultimate hospital pass and found himself reinvented as Minister for Killing Badgers.

What was going on? My theory is that Nick Clegg was anxious to secure the return to office of David Laws. David is extremely able, but I suspect the odd role he was given - half schools minister, half Cabinet Office fixer - was a reflection of how small Nick's inner circle is.

In fact, I suspect that Nick was so anxious that David Cameron was able to exact quite a price in the negotiations over the reshuffle. Hence our odd retreat from Defence and the Foreign Office and the sacrifice of poor David Heath.