Ever seen in the same room? Bernard Williams and Nigel Farage

As well as being Shirley Williams' first husband, Bernard Williams was arguably the foremost British moral philosopher of the late 20th century.

I met him round about 1980, while I was doing my philosophy degree at York. We had a philosophy society and would ask eminent philosophers for dinner and a bit of discussion afterwards. Bernard Williams was one of the guests I recall, and another was a young American called Daniel Dennett.

You can hear Bernard Williams above discussing linguistic philosophy with Bryan Magee. Click on the arrow to play a short clip I have selected, or go to YouTube to watch the whole programme.

Williams is a wonderfully intelligent and lucid speaker, but what worries me, watching him today, is the extent to which he looks and sounds like a hugely erudite version of Nigel Farage.

Shirley Williams: a Liberal lion and trailblazer?

Shirley Williams was the subject of a fringe meeting organised by the Liberal Democrat History Group at the party's spring conference this year. You can watch the proceedings in the video above

What comes over is that it was Williams's personal qualities as much as her political beliefs that attracted people to her, and that a certain diffidence held her back in her political career. I think being a woman in politics in her era is enough to explain the latter point.

I was a little surprised by the fringe meeting's title - 'Shirley Williams: Liberal Lion and Trailblazer' - because throughout her time in her first party, Williams was seen as a mainstream Labour figure. She received considerable trade union support in internal elections, for instance.

It was her intellectual opposition to Trotskyism that led her to leave Labour: she wasn't prepared to mouth  clichés about 'a broad church' or tolerate the compromises necessary to thrive under Michael Foot's leadership. That made her a lion, but not in itself a Liberal, still less a trailblazing one.

A puzzle late in her career is why she staked so much of her political capital on getting the Lib Dems to support Andrew Lansley's changes to the National Health Service. They were not in the Coalition agreement, went against everything David Cameron had said about health before the 2010 election and few people even in the Conservative Party had any idea what Lansley was trying to achieve.

When I started editing Lord Bonkers' diaries the old boy said of Shirley Williams: "Surely she must be the most popular politician ever to be defeated at three consecutive general elections?"

But I would never be that brutal, because I remember just how difficult it was to get elected as a Liberal or SDP parliamentary candidate in the Alliance years.

Top trivia: Shirley Williams and Softly Softly

While writing my recent posts on Softly Softly: Task Force I've had at the back of my mind a memory of reading that Frank Windsor, who played Barlow's sidekick John Watt, and his wife had lived in a commune with Shirley Williams and her then husband, the philosopher Bernard Williams.

It sounds unlikely, but it turns out to be two-thirds true.

Shirley and Bernard Williams shared a house in Holland Park with the publisher Hilary Rubinstein and his wife Helge for 14 years.

Part of the house was let as a flat, and the tenants were Frank and Mary Windsor.

Shirley Williams' autobiography Climbing the Bookshelves gives a flavour of life in the house:

Back at Phillimore Place the child population had multiplied. The Rubinsteins' third, Mark, was born a few weeks before Rebecca, and our tenants Frank Windsor, the TV actor of such noted series as Z Cars, and his wife Mary had produced a daughter, Amanda. 

Looking after them all was much easier than it would have been for a nuclear family living on on its' own. All the adults worked outside the home, but at different times of the day. I was usually away in the afternoons and evenings, since the main vote in Parliament was at 10 p.m. following several hours of debate, so I was often around in the mornings, at least until I became a minister. 

Bernard would be at home during the university vocations and Helge, who was a marriage guidance counsellor, conducted many of her consultations at home too. 

There was always a familiar adult around, for the small but significant crises that erupt in family life, the scratched knee or the dead goldfish. So the stress and guilt that afflict so many families were minimised.

Ladies and gentleman, we have our Trivial Fact of the Week.

Is the call for a progressive alliance a counsel of despair?

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Martin Kettle has a piece in the Guardian arguing that a 'progressive alliance' involving Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and whoever will not in itself deliver victory over the Conservatives:

If a progressive alliance is focused solely on proportional representation and electoral pacts, it will be inward-looking. Why would most people vote for it, even if - improbably - the parties were able to sort all the details? Proportional representation may help, but it is not the key that unlocks the door.

He's right, of course.

But there is another thing that worries me about the widespread enthusiasm for a progressive alliance. It's that it is a counsel of despair. We have given up any hope of winning Conservative voters.

Maybe it's social media that has encouraged this state of mind. See a tweet by or about a Leave voter who has changed their mind and you will see a host of insulting replies from long-term Remainers.

While if a former Tory voter announces he will support Labour next time he will be abused by Corbynites for his earlier treachery.

More and more, we talk only to our tribe and the supporters of other parties exist only as distant caricatures.

There is hope in the traditional electioneering that is taking place at the moment. You can't neat knocking on door and talking to people as a way of gauging the public mood.

Kettle himself points to Shirley Williams's approach to politics as  a model that might give such a progressive alliance substance. He says she was:

instinctively creative in thinking about shared moral and political values across parties and broadly shared political objectives. 

That is certainly the approach the opposition parties need today.

Farewell to Shirley Williams

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I was very sorry to hear of Shirley Williams' death. Her warm, sensible, conversational style reminds us of what has been lost from British politics in recent years.

Her Guardian obituary speculates that she might have made a more attractive leader of the nascent SDP than Roy Jenkins, which makes a lot of sense.

Yet I cannot remember this possibility being talked about at the time. Put it down to sexism.

It also worth pointing out that Shirley Williams was not an insipid moderate. 

In her Labour days she was seen as being in the mainstream of the party and received a lot of trade union support in its internal elections.

Her decision to leave was down to her strong opposition to Trotskyism and belief that it had no place in the Labour Party.

Again, the existence of a politician with principles and deeply held beliefs reminds us of what we have lost.

Nicola Horlick: Jo Swinson is in talks with lots of Labour and Conservative MPs

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Nicola Horlick, at one time Britain's best-know businesswoman and a Conservative, has just been adopted as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Chelsea and Fulham.

In an interview with the i newspaper she gives us a glimpse of what Jo Swinson is up to:

“A lot of MPs from both Labour and the Tories were talking to Jo Swinson about defecting, but the trouble is we’ve got all our candidates already.”

The answer seems to be for the existing Lib Dem candidate to stand down:

It does seem unfair that someone who has worked so hard at a local level to get to be our candidate may be moved aside for a more well known candidate. It really has to be their decision whether to step aside for a better known figure, someone who may have a better chance of winning the seat. 

“It comes down to whether or not an existing candidate is willing to be gracious and step aside in the interest of the party.”

The trouble is that, after the debacle (hem hem) of the last two elections, there are few winnable seats for the Lib Dems - even though we hope our emergence as England's only major Remain party has changed that.

And the other trouble is that high-profile defectors are rarely such vote-winners as they like to think.

I remember (though I have forgotten his name) that the existing Liberal candidate stepped aside to allow the Labour defector and former minister Chris Mayhew to fight Bath, which even then was a good Liberal prospect, in the February 1974 general election. Mayhew failed to win it.

Equally, everyone expected Bill Pitt to step aside in favour of Shirley Williams when a by-election was called in Croydon North West in 1981. But he insisted on being the Alliance candidate and won the by-election.

I suppose I should be outraged that defectors from both sides threaten to turn the Liberal Democrats into a centre party, but it is hard to be too dogmatic about a party that has so little ideology to begin with. And I am rather pleased that people now want to join us.

Instead, I am excited by the discovery, made in the course of writing this post, that Nicola Horlick's father Michael Gayford was a Liberal candidate.

He fought the Wirral constituency three times: at the two general elections of 1974 and the 1976 by-election caused by the resignation of Wirral's MP Selwyn Lloyd.

Lloyd was Speaker of the House of Commons between 1971 and 1976, which mean that in the two 1974 elections both the Liberals and Labour broke the convention that the Speaker should not be opposed.

So farewell then Andrew Neil and This Week

It was announced today that Andrew Neil is giving up presenting This Week and the BBC is taking the opportunity to scrap the programme.

There was a time when I never missed This Week. The problem, as a confirmed hater of Question Time, was how to fill the 20 minutes between Newsnight ended and it began.

Then I got older and realised that I could go to bed and watch it on iPlayer the next day.

Then I gave up watching it at all.

There were always too many "funny" items that weren't funny - step forward Kevin Maguire and Quentin Letts.

But Andrew Neil is a better broadcaster than the Dimblebys added to John Humphrys and multiplied several times over.

OK so he has run with the hare and hunted with the hounds too much recently, but at his best he is peerless. The BBC should have made better use of him.

I remember, in the days when he was seen as a meritocrat from a humble background, Neil's forensic politeness forcing from Michael Gove the admission that his adoptive parents had paid for him to attend one of Scotland's most expensive private schools.

And This Week could be brilliant. I remember a riveting discussion of alcoholism with Shirley Williams and Rosie Boycott on the evening of the day that Charles Kennedy resigned as Liberal Democrat leader.

I used to grumble about its late-night slot, but maybe the BBC should have made a virtue of it and made it open ended - something along the lines of Channel 4's old After Dark.

If you keep politicians up late enough and lubricate them with Blue Nun, they start to tell the truth.

Shirley Williams retires from the Lords 62 years after fighting her first parliamentary election

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From BBC News:

Baroness Williams has delivered her final speech to the House of Lords before retiring from the chamber. 

In her speech she talked of the UK's "special genius" for "great public sector imagination" and international leadership. 

The former education secretary said she hoped the UK would continue to play that leadership role by staying within the European Union.

You can watch a video of the speech below.

Above you can see a photo of her in 1954 when, as Shirley Catlin, she fought and lost a by-election in the Harwich constituency for Labour.

Lord Bonkers pays tribute to Shirley Williams

Lord Bonkers writes exclusively for Liberal England:

"I am sorry to see her go, but I fear she had lost the dressing room."

Some background to the row over Chris Rennard, Liberal Democrat peers and the Federal Executive

I have to declare an interest, in that I have known Chris Rennard for more than 30 years, but I agree with Mark Pack's view that the last thing we should be doing is distancing Liberal Democrat peers from the rest of the party.

I also believe it is a misbegotten idea to change the party constitution just because you don't like the successful candidate in a particular contest.

But a post on this blog from February of last year may give some useful background to the current row. As the BBC documentary is still online I am reproducing it in full.

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.

Note, too, Caron's second comment: "And, actually, one other person who has been very critical of the Lords is Mr Farron. There is no love lost."

Shirley Williams on Testament of Youth

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Jasper Rees has interviewed Shirley Williams about the film of her mother Vera Brittain's autobiographical book Testament of Youth:

What Williams really admires about the film is the friendships ("brilliantly done") and the sense of a young woman’s pioneering struggle for gender equality, plus the later glimpse of her internationalism. Brittain took the story of Testament of Youth deep into the Twenties to portray her growing conviction that the Great War must also be the last war.

Williams is aware that her mother’s pacifism is not fashionable, and indeed some columnists have given Brittain’s stance towards the Third Reich a kicking as her story returns to national attention

"I didn’t agree with my mother about that. I concluded that Hitler was so evil that you couldn’t stop him even with the most dedicated pacifism — he would have shot Gandhi."

Shirley pays a remarkable tribute to Cheryl Campbell, who played Brittain in the 1979 television adaptation - you will find it all on Youtube:

"She was so like my mother in many ways. You couldn’t get a cigarette paper between the two."

And interview concludes:

The hope is that the film will send new readers to the book for a bracing dose of Brittain’s candour, unrivalled among female chroniclers of the war.

"That's the thing I most respect," says Williams. "She was an incredibly honest woman. She never softened the truth. Nor did she exaggerate it. Don’t forget we’re talking about the Edwardian age. People were not candid, especially women."

This is Shirley's family history, so she should know. But I believe that the awful English "respectability", which is so often blamed on the Victorians, is more typical of the early decades of the 20th century. Particularly of the years following the First World War,

Forty years is a long time in politics

There is a story about the Soviet official who came on a visit to Britain and expressed his wish to meet the person responsible for seeing that enough bread was baked and delivered to London each day. He was astounded when he was informed that there was no such person.

But looking back four decades to the time when I was becoming interested in politics, it has to be admitted that the Britain of the era looks remarkably collectivist to modern eyes.

The press cutting above was tweeted by the Thatcherise account, which is replaying - 40 years on tot he day - the events surrounding Margaret Thatcher's election as Conservative leader in February 1975.

Because in November 1974 the prices of goods in British shops were controlled by the Department of Prices and Consumer Protection. This short-lived government department that had two secretaries of state: Shirley Williams (1974-6) and Roy Hattersley (1976-9).

Consumer protection was on the up in 1970s - does anyone remember Richard Stilgoe and Nationwide's consumer unit - and it now seems a forward-looking movement.

By contrast, the idea of price control now seems extraordinary. And the National Archives sites spells out just this department's work in the area:

The Prices Policy Divisions were developed from the prices interests of the DTI's Prices and Incomes Division. One Division was concerned with general prices and counter inflation policy, especially in connection with the Price Code and the Price Commission; the other with price regulation and information, the administration of food subsidies, and the relationship between price control and industrial policy.

This is the sort of Labourism I grew up with. And, despite coming from a poor family, I never found it enticing.

And, as it turned out, Margaret Thatcher was right. Competition between supermarkets proved a far more effective way of keeping prices down than government control.

But the Thatcher era is now long gone too, and her views now sound almost as old fashioned. The travails of Tesco suggest that the supermarket era is over too. Certainly, here in Britain, dirigiste Labourism is far from our biggest worry - despite what some commentators would have us believe.

I guess the moral is that 40 years is a long time in politics - and 30 years is just as long.

The SDP: From Cold War warriors to placating Putin

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Back in the 1980s, one of the dividing lines between the Liberal Party and the SDP was defence.

While the Liberal Party had many unilateral disarmers and was generally keen to reduce Britain's nuclear arsenal, the SDP was convinced for the need for strong nuclear defence against the Soviet threat.

That debate has a period charm now, because what neither side realised was that the Soviet Union was just a few years from dissolution.

The only person in Alliance circles who seemed to have grasped this was an academic called Brian May (not the rock guitarist turned badger campaigner), who argued that the idea that the Soviets still dreamt of invading Western Europe was mistaken. But he was a marginal figure who soon disappeared from the debate.

Time has moved on and now we have a Russian leader who does invade other countries - Georgia and Ukraine - and threaten others, such as Estonia. His allies in Eastern Ukraine brought down a passenger jet and killed British citizens.

So are the founders of the SDP warning us of the need to stop Putin?

Not a bit of it. Just look at the Lords' debate on Russia earlier this week.

Here is David Owen:

It is very hard to see Ukraine, with all the financial difficulties that it has had and its considerable and long record of corruption, achieving the economic growth and prosperity that it deserves without co-operation, first, heading towards membership of the European Union, and secondly, retaining good, strong working relations with the Russian Federation. There is no escape from that, and some of the language that we have heard in the past few months, seeming to think that a solid division between Ukraine and Russia is in the interests of Europe, let alone the world, is a great mistake.

And here, more remarkably, is Shirley Williams:

I very much agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said: the Ukrainians did not start very sensibly by trying to rule out Russian as the second language of Ukraine. The blame is not entirely distributed on one side. 

The noble Lord was also absolutely right to say that we do not sufficiently consider the history of Russia. The history of Russia is a history of one invasion after another, one occupation after another, and growing fear within Russia herself which has led to security being the overwhelming consideration for those who vote. ... 

Of course we should accept the independence of Georgia and Ukraine, but it is unwise to talk as widely as we do about the possibility of both joining NATO. Ukraine has long been the buffer for Russia against the attacks of other countries. The thought that she might roll NATO’s power right up to the border of Russia itself is not timely.

It was left to Kishwer Falkner to speak up for human rights in Russia and the countries it menaces:

Ultranationalism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, predatory capitalism, gross human rights violations and a stealthy expansion of the state at home are there for all of us to see in Russia—a European country. One can add to that list belligerent action against neighbouring states, annexation, the use of hybrid warfare, cyberwarfare, targeted assassinations abroad and disappearances of people—that is the new normal as the projection of Russian power. 

This miscalculation on the part of the West was not just revealed in the morning mist in Crimea this February; for the 140 million ordinary Russians, it has been coming for some time. In fact, it has been building up since 2000, when Vladimir Putin first came to power. It is the people of Russia who have paid the price for their country’s misrule, which looks set to continue well into the 2020s as elections are fixed again and musical chairs reflect choice between President and Prime Minister. 

But now Ukrainians are also paying for Putin’s imperialism. The invasion and occupation of Crimea is already rendering Crimeans poorer as their economy has collapsed along with the region’s tourism. Crimean Tatars are once again dispossessed in their own land. Non-ethnic Russian Ukrainians are displaced or consigned to being non-citizens in their own country.

I believe that Kishwer joined the Liberal Democrats after the two parties had merged, so there are no neat Liberal vs SDP lines to be drawn here.

But it is worth pausing a moment to reflect on how far David Owen, at least, has travelled in 30 years.

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.

Jo Swinson and Shirley Williams on what needs to change at Westminster

The House Magazine has a joint interview with these two leading Liberal Democrats on  the challenges of being a female politician, what has changed in the last 50 years, and what still needs to change:

Jo Swinson: Some things have changed for the better. Obviously we now have 146 women MPs – still nowhere near enough by the way, but we have significantly more. Women don’t feel they can’t attack other women in the chamber on a political basis. I don’t think that there are as many personal attacks and I often find that if you look at the environment at Women and Equalities questions, and debates on international development, you tend to get more women in the chamber. The committee I've just finished sitting on, the Children and Families Bill, was a majority of women which is the first time I've ever seen that. And it’s not that you always agree, but women disagree in a slightly different way ... 

Shirley Williams: I should add that the House of Lords is a much easier place to be a woman in. There’s a very fixed ethos of politeness. There’s a gentle hiss if people are rude to one another. They don’t like at all people that personally attack other people. That encourages women in particular and it may be why there are quite a few women from ethnic minorities in the Lords. That measures what is still wrong with some of the attitudes and approaches in the Commons.

I also like Shirley's comment on the old Lady Members' Room:

It had an ironing board in it, much used by Mrs Thatcher who was very keen on ironing. The funny thing was, that was about all it had. It had a sofa in case you felt faint and it had an ironing board.

Shirley Williams questions Jersey's status as a tax haven

On Tuesday Shirley Williams asked a question in the Lords about the value of offshore accounts held by British citizens in the Channel Islands and the steps that are being taken to investigate them:

Jersey is one of the most secretive tax havens in the world. In a tax haven, neither corporate profits nor other profits of a corporate nature are taxed, nor are capital gains. Will he say whether there is any way in which those large, wealthy corporations which make their profits out of the UK consumer in this country can be persuaded or cajoled by HMRC into paying the taxes that they should? 

Secondly, can any steps be taken to prevent illegal profits - I am referring to those from, for example, fraud and theft ... - from being placed in secret accounts in a way that enables such people to escape international justice altogether?

In a sign of the strange times we live in, the minister replying was another Liberal Democrat, Dick Newby:

In respect of international corporations, the key thing is the extent to which we can extend international co-operation in that respect, which is why the recent announcement of the UK Chancellor and the German Finance Minister, following a G20 Finance Ministers' meeting in Mexico, was very important. 

We are now looking at concerted international co-operation to strengthen international tax standards. However, at the moment, it may mean that international companies can pay less tax than they would otherwise owe. We are trying to catch up with new forms of commerce and to make sure that tax is paid in proportion to where people are undertaking their business.

Lord Tunnicliffe also asked about Jersey:

My Lords, the Minister mentioned £19 billion that is tied up in Jersey related to UK citizens-a very precise figure. Does this mean that there is sufficient transparency, and that we have a sufficient viewing, of what is happening in Jersey? Do we have sufficient HMRC resources addressing that? And if the answer to both of those is yes, does he have a feel for the amount of money that the UK Exchequer could expect out of these people if we were better able to get hold of that money through agreement?

It is early days, but it looks as though people are beginning to question Jersey's deeply anomalous status as a Crown dependency whose policies disadvantage the huge majority of Her Majesty's subjects.

Shirley Williams' speech to Nottingham Lib Dem event last Saturday

Shirley Williams to speak in Nottingham

Shirley Williams is speaking in Nottingham on the afternoon of 5 May 2012. More details on the Nottingham Liberal Democrats website.

David Cameron and the price of pasties

I have to confess that I find the row over the imposition of pasties funny. And if you don't want to pay extra for a Cornish delicacy, why not enjoy a Leicestershire one instead? Let's hear it for the Melton Mowbray pork pie.

But I begin to wonder if something I posted four years ago may not turn out to be prophetic:

David Cameron's ... problem is that he is, er, David Cameron. The only time he threatened to engage public interest today was when he talked of the price of bread, milk and eggs. Yet if ever someone gave the impression of not knowing how much bread, milk and eggs cost, that person is David Cameron. 

I always wondered, in a society where being "posh" is just about the worst sin out, if David Cameron's background - and even more the fact that he looks like a public school boy - would count against him. This is one issue where it will. 

If you want to run this sort of prices campaign, you need someone who looks as they go shopping regularly to do it for you. Shirley Williams used to do it very effectively, complete with shopping basket, in her Labour days. You do not choose a shiny-cheeked Old Etonian.

My younger readers won't recall this, but in the 1970s "prices" were one of the great political issues.

The economic downturn may mean we are about to explore a political landscape where the price of pasties really matters to voters.

Liberal Democrats need a health policy of their own

The Liberal Democrat Conference has voted by a narrow majority not to mandate our peers to vote for the Health & Social Care Bill as it currently stands.

But does the Lib Dem Conference mandate the party's elected and unelected representatives how to vote on individual pieces of legislation while the are passing through Westminster anyway? It makes party policy, of course, but that is rather a different thing.

So I found it hard to be as moved by events in Gateshead earlier today as the people who were there - and are still shouting about it on Twitter as I write. (Shirley Williams has gone from heroine to dupe within the last 24 hours, for those who are not following it.)

My own view on the Health and Social Care Bill remains that the Conservatives were foolish to bring in a flagship bill on health in the first place. I have blogged about this before.

But I share the mystification of David Boyle that so many Liberal Democrats attach such importance to maintaining untouched the bureaucratic NHS structure bequeathed to us by Labour. Much of what the bill proposes, such as giving GPs an enhanced role in commissioning, seems to me thoroughly sensible - even if it could have been done without the bill.

So I am puzzled by the assertion of the normally sensible Mark Thompson that the Lib Dems "will reap an electoral whirlwind" if the support the bill. I can seen that Labour will blame any future problems in the NHS on the bill, whether it has anything to do with them or not, but nowhere does Mark tell us why he thinks the outcome of the bill will be so dreadful in the eyes of voters.

My own chief concern with the bill was the original draft's removal of the secretary of state's obligation to provide a service. This is all the more important if you introduce more competition and local control into the NHS, because there has to be someone for people to appeal to if things are not working. But I am assured that this - or something that will mean the same if it comes to court - has been restored to the bill in the Lords.

David Boyle also puts his finger on what has been wrong with the Liberal Democrat to health and the NHS for so long:

For ten years, we failed to work out what a Liberal NHS might look like for the century ahead. When the new legislation was being drafted by the coalition, there was a vacuum where major Liberal thinking ought to have been. 

All we could do was to look back fondly to the way we imagined things to be a generation ago, and we clung to it manfully. All we could say about the NHS was – apart from the usual principles – what we didn’t want.

As one way forward, I would suggest we take seriously the proposal for "democratically controlled and clinically led" health boards that John Pugh makes in his new report A Way Through: NHS Reform without strife and upheaval.