"Join the Lib Dems, stop moaning on Facebook and get involved": Leigh Frost did and now he's leader of Cornwall Council

"I was a big Remainer and still am. I believe that we had a lot of benefits from being members of the European Union. A vote to leave the European Union basically gave you less rights and I didn’t like the fact my children would grow up with less rights than I had.

"I became one of those ranty people on Facebook about why Brexit was a bad idea. Dan Rogerson [former Lib Dem MP for North Cornwall] sent me a message telling me I should join the Lib Dems, stop moaning on Facebook and get involved." Mr Rogerson, a newly elected councillor, is now a member of Cllr Frost’s Cabinet.

And now Leigh Frost is the Liberal Democrat leader of Cornwall, where we have formed a minority administration with the Independents. He talked to the Falmouth Packet ("in his treasured Bodmin") about his ambitions for the council:

"We need more affordable homes. The Government has set its target, which we all know is a bit of a fantasy in reality, but we’ve got to try and deliver the best we can. We need a mix of sizes. One of the biggest issues is we do not build enough one and two beds, so there’s nowhere for people to downsize to.

"There’s a whole range of housing stock that could be unlocked just by building more smaller properties. It’s not just about developing more, it’s about being smarter about how we produce the best from our existing stock."

He also pointed to the huge challenge that children's services are for all councils and his ambitions to use the council's powers to improve the dentistry service in the county.

Mirror alleges Tories exceeded spending limit in 9 Lib Dem seats

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This morning's Mirror takes up the Channel 4 News investigation of alleged Conservative overspending at the last general election.

Its report says:

A Mirror investigation today reveals how 24 Tory MPs failed to declare thousands of pounds spent on their election campaigns in marginal seats. 

None of the MPs we name below declared the party's controversial RoadTrip battlebuses in local budgets, with Tory HQ picking up the tab instead. 

If the estimated £2,000 cost of the bus had been included locally, some of the MPs could have breached strict spending limits. 

Five Tory RoadTrip battlebuses crossed the country to help handpicked candidates in the final stages of last year’s election campaign, with head office picking up the tab. 

The total cost of this campaign has never been published, but the Mirror has found invoices indicating it was more than £2,000 a day, including pay and expenses for volunteers and promotion costs.

It is striking that 9 of the 24 seats the Mirror has identified were held by the Liberal Democrats:

• Wells
• Chippenham
• North Cornwall
• Thornbury and Yate
• Kingston
• Yeovil
• Torbay
• Cheltenham
• Sutton and Cheam

There's more about this story on the Channel 4 News microsite.

Liberal Democrats try to win back the green vote

The Liberal Democrats are promising to place Britain's forests in a protected trust to stop them ever being sold off, as was proposed in the early months of the Coalition.

According to the Guardian, this measure will be contained in a nature bill that is being drawn up by the party to bring in greater protections for the environment. It will be put to the party's autumn conference for possible inclusion in the its manifesto for the next general election. Dan Rogerson appears to be the moving spirit behind it.

Its reports says:

Under the plans, the Lib Dems are suggesting a target of more than 700,000 trees per year, or 3.5m over the course of a parliament, which is threefold the number due to be planted under the coalition's Big Tree Plant scheme that covers built-up areas. It would mean a new tree for every child born over the next five years. 

The bill would include targets for clean air and water, a plan to stop natural resources such as peat and wood being harvested at an unsustainable level and put British forests into a trust to stop them being privatised. 

It would also increase the penalties for enforcement and punishment of environmental crime such as deliberate water pollution and wildlife crime and use the proceeds for these increased penalties to fund the National Wildlife Crime Unit and the sector of the Environment Agency that tackles pollution-related crime.

Though I could never get too outraged at the prospect of conifer plantations grown for cropping being privately owned, I am pleased to hear of this planned bill, because there are many in the party who seem content to see our green voters go.

I am one of many who grew up on the slogan "Think global, act local," but showing a concern for your local environment today can make you a "nimby". Neither the infrastructure fanatics nor the severe economic liberals have much time for your local woodland if someone wants to build on it.

Meanwhile, those who do care for the environment tend to be more interested in staving off climate change than local campaigns.

So all power to Dan Rogerson and his 700,000 trees a year.

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.

Liberal Democrats now largest party on Cornwall Council

Last night the Liberal Democrats gained the Wadebridge East ward on Cornwall Council last night. The seat was previously held by the Independent councillor Collin Brewer, whose views on disabled children (quite rightly) gained him national notoriety.

The full result:

Steve Knightley (Lib Dem) 408
Independent 399
Conservative 217
UKIP 202
Labour 58

Following last night's result the strength of the parties on Cornwall Council is as follows:

Liberal Democrat 37
Independent 36
Conservative 30
Labour 8
UKIP 6,
Mebyon Kernow 4
Others 2

The Wadebridge East ward forms part of the North Cornwall constituency, held for the Liberal Democrats by Dan Rogerson.

John Pardoe returns to Westminster

Cornwall Community News reports that John Pardoe, Liberal MP for North Cornwall between 1966 and 1979, visited Westminster today with his wife and grandson.

The online magazine says:

His varied career saw him standing against Margaret Thatcher in Finchley, leading the Treasury field during the Lib-Lab pact, and finally losing out to David Steel in a nasty little political scrap in which he was accused of donning a toupe. 

The former Cambridge footlights comedian also stood out in political life for his unflagging support for Jeremy Thorpe, a loyalty widely believed to have cost him his seat.

It goes on to quote the constituency's current MP Dan Rogerson:

"As a local MP, John set a very high standard for the rest of us to follow, and he is still well loved and remembered by people across North Cornwall."

Along with David Penhaligon, John Pardoe was my first Liberal hero. Had I been a party member in 1976 , I should have certainly voted for him in the party leadership election.

Pardoe was more charismatic than David Steel and gave the impression of being more interested in ideas, even if his Liberalism was perhaps less well rooted that Steel's.

The website's reference to a toupe, incidentally, is a reference to that party leadership contest. Paul Linford will tell you all about it.

And the website also wins our Bad Pun of the Week Award for its headline on this story: "PARDOE THE FURNITURE".

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The 'Saucy Robin Teverson' at Oakham Quay

And so our Romance of the long-past days of the hated Pasty Tax draws to a close.

The 'Saucy Robin Teverson' at Oakham Quay

And so it was that this morning the driver and I were waved through Cornish customs and took a charabanc laden with pasties over the Tamar into England. We delivered it to a warehouse owned by a fellow called Gregg (who appeared to be doing Terribly Well in the baked goods business) and were given a cheque in return. This, of course, I have already mailed to Squire Rogerson – less my expenses, petrol costs et cetera.

All seems right with the old demesne, despite my absence. The Reverend Hughes Church Lads Table Tennis Club (credited with single-handedly reducing crime in Rutland to a statistically insignificant level) is meeting in St Asquith’s Parish Hall as I write. It is true that Meadowcroft has been complaining about the Elves of Rockingham Forest taking plants from his glasshouses to make their elixirs, but he is prone to grumble and, besides, these elven remedies are the only thing to ease my wound from the Aylesbury by-election of 1938.

The only problem was explaining to Matron what I had done with the Well-Behaved Orphans, but the gift of a bottle of Nicholson’s gin smoothed things over eventually. She will be with me tomorrow morning when the Saucy Robin Teverson ties up at Oakham Quay.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Cornish adventure

• "Better than a chimbley!"
• The remote cove
• Black George
• "No one will suspect a peer of the realm of breaking the law"

Lord Bonkers' Diary: "No one will suspect a peer of the realm of breaking the law"

"No one will suspect a peer of the realm of breaking the law"

I have fought too many by-election campaigns to be afraid of fisticuffs and am no duffer with an orchard doughty (that sturdy club beloved of Rutland gamekeepers), but I am not accustomed to being quite so ‘tooled up’ – as Violent Bonham-Carter used to put it. Still, I walk up from the harbour, with its smells of tarred rope and rusted chain, armed with pistol, cutlass and so forth as requested. I reach the cliff top and await the arrival of the pastymen.

One by one, figures appear through the chill mist. I recognise the remote cove and also discern a prosperous-looking fellow (who turns out to be Squire Rogerson) and a fellow in clerical garb who, sure enough, is Parson Gilbert.

We spy the lines of a trim brig out at sea – and then those of a second ship that rounds the headland. “It’s the Revenue,” growls Squire Rogerson, “they’ll be no shipping of pasties tonight.” He allows his lantern to flare for a moment and immediately the signal is answered from onboard the brig.

With that we find ourselves rather at a loose end, so we repair to the Jolly Tyler. My new companions turn out to be a friendly bunch. Parson Gilbert, for instance, proves Sound on any number of points of doctrine (though in Cornwall they no longer cleave to the back-foot no ball rule as we do in the Church of Rutland). Even the remote cove begins to unbutton a little.

“The trouble is,” explains Squire Rogerson (a capital fellow at standing his round), “we have twenty bushels of pasties ready to go, but there we shall not be able to load them aboard the Saucy Robin Teverson as long as the Revenue men are watching.

“I may be able to help you,” I reply. “I happen to have one of Rutland Motors’ finest charabancs parked outside the Jamaica Guest House. Why don’t we fill it with pasties? No one will suspect a peer of the realm of breaking the law.”

“Wasn’t there a lord in Essex...” begins one, but I fix him with a stern eye and he is quelled.

“The only problem,” I continue, “is what to do with the Well-Behaved Orphans.”

“In my experience,” returns Squire Rogerson, “there is nothing as good for orphans as sea air.”

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Cornish adventure

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

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Black George

Black George

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

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

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Cornish adventure

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

Dan Rogerson: Maturing nicely

A press release on his own website reveals that the Liberal Democrat member for North Cornwall is chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Cheese.

Nice to see a fellow Lib Dem taking up such an important position.

Lord Bonkers adds: In my young day this position was held by Lord Wensleydale.

Less a constituency than an incantation

Today's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News:

Feigned praise

Sammy Wilson, the new MP for East Antrim, gave the best guide to maiden speeches. His leader Ian Paisley had told him to say nice things about his constituency, pay tribute to his predecessor and not be controversial.

Wilson hymned the beauties of Ulster, but found it hard to be too kind about the previous member. He had spent years trying to get rid of him. Worse, they are neighbours: “In fact, he is only a stone’s throw away – I pick them out of the garden every morning.”

And controversy? He was doing fine till he got on to King Billy and the Boyne. But then he is a Democratic Unionist.

Let’s see how some of the Liberal Democrats’ maiden speeches measured up last week. Danny Alexander had an advantage: his is less a constituency than an incantation. Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey – there are coach tours with less ambitious itineraries. Dan Rogerson struck a nationalist note: North Cornwall “stretches from the border with England…”

Elsewhere it was local history time. Chris Huhne said Eastleigh was created when the London & South Western Railway’s works arrived there in 1891, and William Cobbett once lived down the road.

Julia Goldsworthy had to mention two previous MPs for Falmouth & Camborne. Not just Candy Atherton, but also David Mudd. He won it for the Tories back in 1970 and took it into his head to stand as an independent this time. David Howarth said Cambridge often changed hands in the nineteenth century, usually after the unseating of MPs for corruption, but did not name names.

That was tending to the controversial. Chris Huhne went all the way, questioning Labour’s mandate with the lowest vote share of any governing party since 1832. Dan Rogerson called for the law to ensure only pasties made in the Duchy can be sold as Cornish pasties. That is controversial to some, but if they stop claiming to make Melton Mowbray pork pies down there he may even win support from us in Leicestershire.

Sammy Wilson also said a maiden speech is like a first night out with a girl: “One wants to do enough to impress but not too much and get in trouble with her father.” I wonder what Dr Paisley thought of that?