New role for Brian Paddick - and a note on his family history

[Later. In fact Brian has been appointed as a non-executive director of the Met. The official press release is online.]

Lib Dem Voice reports that the Liberal Democrat peer Brian Paddick is to become a non-executive adviser to the Metropolitan Police and will sit as a crossbencher in the House of Lords for the duration of this appointment.

Congratulations to him - I'm sure he will give good advice.

This story gives me an excuse to revisit a favourite piece of trivia: Brian Paddick is a relation of the actor Hugh Paddick, who is best remembered today as a member of the cast of the radio comedy Round the Horne.

As the graphic below, which I salvaged from a defunct family history site via the Wayback Machine, shows, Brian and Hugh Paddick are second cousins once removed.

You can hear Hugh playing Julian to Kenneth Williams' Sandy above.

The Joy of Six 1036

The Police Bill is not just about curtailing the right to protest, writes Brian Paddick: "The new legislation allows the Home Secretary to force local authorities and other public bodies to hand over sensitive, personal information to the police."

Henry Redhead Yorke, who was MP for York between 1841 and 1848, was the son of a West Indian creole of African/British descent, whose mother was a manumitted slave from Barbuda. Amanda Goodrich discovers a previously unidentified non-white MP.

David Perkins reveals the surprising radicalism of Lawrence du Garde Peach, who wrote most of the books in Ladybird's Adventures from History series.

James Wright explores the popularity of local legends about secret passages.

"The Montreux Casino fire is one of the most mythologised moments in the history of rock. Taking place on the shoreline of Switzerland’s Lake Geneva, the fire would end up inspiring one of rock’s best-known tracks and become cemented in the genre’s history forevermore." Mick McStarkey on Frank Zappa, Deep Purple and the genesis of Smoke on the Water.

At the end of a world tour in 1973, a Santos side featuring the world’s greatest player came to London, where they chose a sleepy suburban town for their training base. Dominic Bliss uncovers the story of Pelé in Tolworth.

Six of the Best 1002

"The scenes we all saw of the police using force against those at the Clapham Common vigil were entirely foreseeable, preventable and unnecessary." Brian Paddick is critical of the inspectorate report on the policing of the vigil for Sarah Everard.

Alison Faulkner offers a depressing analysis of the Commons debates on the review of the Mental Health Act 1983. 'The Expert' - the psychiatrist - was characterised in the debates by knowledge, training and an assumed trustworthiness, while 'The Patient was associated with non-compliance, potential risk and impaired decision making.

Stefan Collini reviews two books on meritocracy: "There have long been individuals from less advantaged social backgrounds for whom education has been the route to advancement (‘the scholarship boy’ was one of the most celebrated, and most obviously gendered, of the tropes used to represent this possibility). This, too, is an important truth, not simply to be disparaged as ‘elite recruitment’. But the fact that such individual stories stand out is an indication that education does not work in this way for the majority."

"The management at ABC spotted something: when they showed a play that was a bit more avant garde or intended to challenge the viewer’s opinions or lifestyle, viewing figures went up. Against the conventional wisdom, it seemed that people in the late 1950s liked having television that took them on full in the face." Russ J. Graham offers an appreciation of Cathy Come Home, 55 years after it was first broadcast.

Richard Coles talks to Lucy Walker about his love of music from Motown to Benjamin Britten.

We look back to the days of Jim Cumbes, Chris Balderstone and the days when it was possible to be a professional footballer and cricketer with Vince Cooper.

Keep Britain Bona

How, you will ask, did this ever get broadcast in the 1960s?

The answer is that Kenneth Horne was seen by the powers that be at the BBC as a safe pair of hands and  a good sort. "If Horne's involved it's probably all right."

Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams' Julian and Sandy proved wildly popular with listeners and were saved for the end of the show to stop them going anywhere, much as Peter Sellers' Bluebottle had been on The Goon Show a decade before.

Incidentally Kenneth Horne's father Silvester Horne was a Liberal MP and a celebrated orator. I once went to visit his grave in Church Stretton.

But then Hugh Paddick is a distant cousin of the Lib Dem peer Brian Paddick.

Private Eye casts little fresh light on the martyrdom of Tim Farron

It is clear that we are not going to receive an explanation of the removal of Tim Farron from the party.

So I have been waiting for the new Private Eye to go on sale - outside London, that happens on the Wednesday.

But its article on Tim's defenestration does not tell us much more than we knew already - see this article from the time by Caron Lindsay, for instance.

It repeats the stories about Brian Paddick's resignation and the tweets from Liz Barker and Anthony Lester, then continues:

Later that afternoon a delegation peers - with Lord Pantsdown (sic) and Lord Newby, the Lib Dem leader in the Lords, reportedly among them - went to see Farron. Various versions of the meeting exist, with some sources insisting that "exceptional pressure" was placed on Farron. ... 

What was the sensational leverage the peers put on Farron to force his departure? No one would answer Lord Gnome's queries, and the Lib Dem press office insisted the whole story of the peers' visit was "just not true" - though a significant  number of well-placed sources in the party beg to differ.

The men in sandals come for Tim Farron

Embed from Getty Images

Tim Farron more than doubled the Liberal Democrat membership and presided over an increase in the number of Lib Dem MPs at last week's general election.

But that was not enough for those anonymous "Lib Dem sources".

Understand some Lib Dems inc Paddick went to see Tim Farron to ask him to go. He initially said no.

— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) June 14, 2017

I am sorry to see Tim go. I think he did as well as could be expected in the near impossible circumstances in which he won the leadership.

The election campaign came too soon for him, with the result that a lot of voters did not know who he was. But with the exception of interview with Andrew Neil, he did well.

The Lib Dems' problems, as shown by the fall of our vote last week, run deep. We need some hard thinking about what the party is for and where our future lies. A leadership election is as likely to distract from that as aid it.

Tim's statement today was perhaps the worst thing he has done as leader.

No doubt it was true that:

“To be a political leader – especially of a progressive, liberal party in 2017 – and to live as a committed Christian, to hold faithfully to the Bible’s teaching, has felt impossible for me.”

But I would suggest this shows the problem with the rather sectarian Evangelical Christianity that Tim favours. Charles Kennedy being a Catholic never seemed to worry him or anyone else.

Maybe it also reveals a problem with modern liberalism. It is not enough for people to tolerate the currently approved progressive view: you have to embrace it or you are no liberal.

Nick Cohen says behind a paywall somewhere that, while we say we are fed up with indentikit PPE-and-think-tank politicians, the truth is that anyone who departs from model is hounded for it.

I suspect Tim's rise and fall shows the truth of that.

Broadcasters need to play fair on mayoral elections

One encouraging aspect of Thursday's elections was the widespread rejection of the mayoral system of local government.

Enthusiasm for that system is a hangover from Blairite heyday, when supporters of debate and discussion just did not get it and Richard Branson was expected to become the first elected mayor of London. The fact that David Cameron still shares that enthusiasm reminds us how much he has modelled his act on Tony Blair's and makes us suspect that, deep down, he is equally shallow.

But the mayoral system is here to stay, in London and a few other cities. And that means the broadcasters have to come to terms with it.

In the recent London campaign, the broadcasters decided that there were four significant candidates: Boris Johnson, Ken Livingstone, Brian Paddick and Jenny Jones. Sure enough, they finished in the first four places in the voting - though, sadly, not in that order.

You could take this as confirmation of the broadcasters' good judgement, but the danger is that it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Had Siobhan Benita, for instance, been granted equal airtime with the big four it is quite possible that she would have finished third. And the sort of people who work for the BBC are likely to feel warmer about the Greens than they do about UKIP, whatever the parties' objective prospects in a particular contest.

Mayoral politics has for me an irredeemable anti-democratic taint - the desire for a strong leader who will get things done without wasting time on talk. But I presume that one of the reasons its supporters like the system is because it bypasses political parties and allows new figures to break through.

For that to happen, those new figures need to be treated on a more equitable basis. And in an increasingly multi-party system the broadcasters must stop trying to pick winners and leave that to the electorate.

The rule must be equal airtime for all mayoral candidates.

Publishing candidates' tax returns will diminish our politics

"Why don't we end this by everybody just publishing what they earn and then what they pay in tax?" suggested Jenny Jones. And they have.

BBC News reports:

In the 2010-11 tax year, Conservative Mr Johnson paid £210,410 income tax on an income of £473,280. 

Labour's Mr Livingstone paid £22,691 tax on an income of £94,568. He also paid £11,970 in corporation tax. 

Liberal Democrat Mr Paddick paid £14,534 in tax on an income of £76,804. 

And Green Party candidate Ms Jones paid £15,577 in income tax on an income of £63,028.

I cannot summon up any enthusiasm for the practice of candidates publishing their tax returns.

Yes, it's amusing to see that Ken "no one should be allowed to vote in a British election, let alone sit in Parliament, unless they pay their full share of tax" Livingstone is a sharper operator than Boris Johnson. But the problems with his candidacy go deeper than that.

I suggested four years ago I said:

I suspect that a widespread feeling that he had outstayed his welcome was one of the reasons for Ken Livingstone's defeat this time.

And he still won't go away. As to why: blame the mayoral system itself.

What requiring candidates to publish these returns - now a precedent has been set I imagine it will soon become impossible for anyone to avoid doing it - will do is further narrow the pool of people who can become political candidates.

If you have are self-employed or have set up a business, you will be vulnerable to accusations that you have not paid enough tax. But if you have gone to university and then worked for one of the main parties at Westminster and then been parachuted into a safe seat, you tax returns will be impeccable.

But we have too many people like that in the Commons already.

We Liberal Democrats don't have such things as safe seats, but the argument I made last year is still valid:

We should not be asking people to vote for us because we are better people or because we work harder than the other parties. We should be asking them to vote for us because we have good judgement and a convincing set of solutions to the problems the country faces.

I'm sorry to quote so many of my old posts, but if I don't do it, who will?

Brian Paddick is feeling bullish

Or so the Fulham & Hammersmith Chronicle says in its interview with the Lib Dem candidate in next year's London Mayoral election:

The Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate, the same man who was trounced with little more than 10 per cent of the vote the last time he went up against the big two, Ken and Boris, insists, this time, he is not here to make up the numbers. 

"You are going to see a different Brian Paddick - I am better prepared and ready for the fight," he says.

Those Lib Dem London Mayoral selection voting figures in full

Thanks to a tweet from the party press people I can reveal that the votes cast in the contest to be the Liberal Democrat candidate in next year's London Mayoral elections were as follows:

Round 1
Brian Paddick 1289
Mike Tuffrey 1232
Brian Haley 316
Lembit Opik 252

Round 2
Brian Paddick 1567
Mike Tuffrey 1476

London Mayoral elections: It's déjà vu all over again

Congratulations to Brian Paddick to on being chosen as the Liberal Democrat candidate in next year's London Mayoral elections.

While we are at it, congratulations to Boris Johnson on being chosen as the Conservative candidate. And congratulations to Ken Livingstone on being chosen as the Labour candidate.

That's right: the big three parties will be fielding the same three candidates in 2012 as they did in 2008.

Why is this? I suspect the answer lies in the Mayoral system itself and the way it makes it harder for people to build a reputation in local politics.

As James Graham wrote back in 2007:

The weakness of the GLA is directly relevant to the difficulty that parties have in finding mayoral candidates. 

The ideal candidate is a big personality who already has a track record of success and a public profile. Back in the day, it was suggested that Tony Blair had Richard Branson in mind for the job. We’ve had talk radio hosts suggested (Nick Ferrari), think tank directors (Nick Boles), cheesy DJs (Mike Read), senior politicians and ex-ministers (Simon Hughes and Steve Norris), but the only candidate who has ever enjoyed public support is someone whose only claim to fame is that he used to run the GLC. In many respects, this is a good thing, and a valuable corrective to the perception that career politics is all bad and disliked by the public. 

But the GLA is not the GLC. Love it or hate it, people took great interest in what the GLC did. Livingstone wasn’t the only personality that emerged from it (Tony Banks, John McDonnell). If we had the GLC now, we would already have half a dozen people being lined up as possible successors to Ken’s crown. Instead, if Livingstone went under a bendy bus tomorrow, Labour would have more difficulty than any other party in finding a credible candidate.

The balance between the mayor and the city council is a problem in Leicester too. In theory the council should be holding the mayor to account: in practice it is the mayor who settles old scores holds the council to account.

Those who favour elected mayors need to solve this problem if they are to convince me of their case.

Lembit Opik and Brian Paddick to sue over phone-hacking

Lembit Opik and Brian Paddick have both been contestants in I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! and both hope to the Liberal Democrat candidate in next London Mayoral election.

Now they have something else in common, reports the Guardian. Both are to take legal action over the phone-hacking scandal:

Öpik said that having been to Scotland Yard to review evidence a couple of months ago, there was "no doubt" in his mind that the News of the World had hacked his phone.

"The closure of the newspaper will do nothing to stop the legal action that myself and others are taking … I'm not going to let go of it. Nor will other people," he said.

Paddick told the BBC over the weekend: "I'm not suing News International, I'm suing the police. They failed in their legal duty to investigate properly first time around."

Calder on Air: Lembit in the jungle

My column from today's Liberal Democrat News.

"Celebs" and Comedy

The frustrating thing about Lembit Opik is that deep down – very deep down – you sense there is a serious politician trying to get out. I remember a meeting of the Federal Policy Committee where he came in halfway through a discussion on defence and illuminated it by drawing on his family’s experience of foreign occupation.

But moments like that have been rarer of late. It is not often I can claim to have been prophetic, but two years ago, in the wake of his defeat by Ros Scott in the election for party president, I wrote on my blog Liberal England:

Lembit has tested to destruction the proposition that there is no such thing as bad publicity. He now needs to take himself more seriously in order to persuade others to take him more seriously. He has a Westminster seat to retain and will no doubt return to the Lib Dem front bench soon.

Otherwise... As I write this, Neil and Christine Hamilton, as if in dreadful warning to him, are appearing on Hole in the Wall.

Well, he wasn’t asked to return to the front bench, didn’t hold his seat and failed to heed my warning. And today he is in the jungle.

Or as Lembit put it in a thumping non sequitur in the opening show of this year’s I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here (ITV1): “I used to be a Member of Parliament. I’m not any more. That’s why I’m here.”

There is something deeply unlovely about I’m a Celebrity... True, none of the contestants are forced to be there, but already Gillian McKeith is emerging as the least popular girl in the school, forced to undergo an ordeal every evening by a vengeful public while that strange Geordie quadruped Antndec capers around like a giggling little boy allowed to be part of the school bully’s entourage.

Lembit’s hopes he will emerge from the jungle as the natural choice to be Liberal Democrat candidate in the next London Mayoral election. I don’t quite get the logic – is he expecting to be up against Wagner and Felicity Kendall? – but there is a precedent of a sort.

Except that Brian Paddick went off to the jungle only after being the party’s last Mayoral candidate. Perhaps that was wise. if London’s voters had seen his inability to deal with David Van Day and the double-decker first, they would have had less confidence in his ability to run Transport for London.

******

The Armstrong and Miller sketch with the RAF pilots who talk street is popular for two reasons. It is linguistically clever, marrying two forms of speech you would think are incompatible. And, by juxtaposing wartime sacrifice and our modern sense of entitlement, it points an unfashionable but valid moral.

Beyond that it is hard to remember which sketches are from Armstong and Miller and which from Mitchell and Webb. In fact I may not have got that right. It could equally be Mitchell and Miller and Armstrong and Webb.

The difference, if I have got this right, is that Mitchell and Webb are the better actors, while Armstrong and Miller too often rely on the university revue tactic of putting on a hat and doing a funny accent.

If you want original comedy at the moment look to The Trip (BBC2), where Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are developing the edgy, semi-fictionalised partnership they began in the film A Cock and Bull Story.

This time they are on a tour of restaurants across the North of England, indulging in impression duels and sparring for superiority. With Coogan and Brydon playing exaggerated versions of themselves, we are in Extras country.

But your uncertainty over how The Trip will develop keeps you watching, whereas the appeal and limitation of shows like Webb and Miller and Mitchell and Armstrong is that they are the same every week.

Peerages for Brian Paddick and Evan Harris?

Simon Walters in the Mail on Sunday says "it was claimed last night" that 44 new peers are to be created by the Coalition "to stop Labour sabotaging their policies in the Upper House". He doesn't say who made the claim though.

He goes on:

Mr Cameron reportedly intends to award 29 peerages to Tory donors and other political allies, with 15 for Mr Clegg's Liberal Democrats. By contrast, Ed Miliband will get just ten new Labour peers.

It is the biggest influx from a governing party since Tony Blair handed out a record 47 peerages when Labour won power in 1997, giving his party a majority in the Lords for the first time.

Who will those 15 new Liberal Democrat peers be? Walters speculates:

Lords insiders say Liberal Democrat candidates include Brian Paddick, the former Scotland Yard Deputy Assistant Commissioner, who stood as the party's London mayoral candidate in 2008, and qualified doctor and anti-abortion campaigner Evan Harris, who lost his seat as Lib Dem MP for Oxford at the Election.

Three Liberal Democrat donors who each paid up to £250 a month into Mr Clegg's private bank account before he became party leader are also said to be under consideration.

They are Ian Wright, a senior executive at drinks firm Diageo; Neil Sherlock, head of public affairs at accountants KPMG; and Michael Young, a former gold-mining executive.

Brian Paddick and Hugh Paddick

In view of the erstwhile Lib Dem Mayoral candidate's current adventures in the jungle, it is time to remind ourselves that he is related to the late Round the Horne actor Hugh Paddick.

Brian Paddick: I'm a poltician, get me in there

What to make of Brian Paddick's decision to appear in I'm a Celebrity...?

At the Lib Dem Conference a couple of months ago Brian was working the fringe hard and had a media adviser in tow. From which I conclude that he is serious about continuing his political career.

From that I conclude that his appearance in ...Get Me Out of Here is not a sign that he is giving up his political career but an attempt to further it. It will be interesting to see if it works.

Meanwhile, how am I going to contact one of my MEPs here in the East Midlands. I refer to a Mr Robert Kilroy-Silk.