From Liberator: Such people write about Lincolnshire as though they were Victorian explorers or missionaries

The new Liberator - issue 429 - is out and can be downloaded free of charge from the magazine's website.

As well as Lord Bonkers' Diary and a book review of mine, it includes this article. I wrote it in response to the local election results of 1 May.

In Search of Their Motives

Why did Reform UK do so well in the local elections? How should parties respond to their rise? Who exactly is voting for them?

Some would tell you to wait for the academics to crunch the numbers, but if you go to the research on how and why Leave won the 2016 European Union referendum then you find, as so often the case in academia, not a body of agreed conclusions but a loose bundle of continuing debates. So rather than wait for a consensus that may never emerge, I’m going to do what I can here to clear what seem to me widespread misconceptions about Reform and their voters.

To begin with, the success of Reform should not shock or even surprise us. Ukip polled more than any other party in the 2014 elections to the European parliament, receiving 26.6 per cent of the vote and electing 24 of the UK’s 73 MEPs. Five years later, the Brexit Party did even better, electing 29 MEPs and receiving 30.5 per cent of the vote, slightly more than Reform UK won in this year’s local elections.

These three successes were achieved by Nigel Farage under three different party names, which reminds us that the far right has always been prepared to form parties, break them up and form new ones until they hit upon an arrangement that attracts voters. It also reminds us that Farage has been key to their successes, but we should have grasped years ago that there is no reason to expect us to be immune to the rise of the far right that has taken place across Western Europe in recent years. Despite leaving the EU, Britain now finds itself with a thoroughly European party system that includes a substantial party that stands to the right of the Conservative Party. This may well be the new normal.

After the EU referendum, Leave’s victory was widely attributed to a desire for revenge by left-behind areas. This narrative had its appeal to some on the left, because you could argue that it made the disastrous outcome of that vote all George Osborne’s fault, but I was never convinced. It seemed rooted in a dated, even nostalgic, view of the working class as white, male and engaged until recently in heavy industry. Yes, big changes have taken place in working class employment, but they took place some decades ago. The Full Monty and Brassed Off came out in the mid-1990s, and both were looking back on a transformation that had already taken place.

Yet a disaffected working-class was the first explanation many reached for to account for Reform’s successes on 1 May. Liberal Democrat Voice, for instance, immediately ran an article that argued Reform is “hoovering up votes across the country by doing one simple thing: articulating the grievances of the working classes”. It was good to see an article on that blog which talked about inequality and social class, but I don’t buy its thesis that Reform’s vote came solely from an aggrieved working class. Even in Durham, where Reform swept away a previously solid Labour majority, the figures show that it won a large slice of the votes that previously went to Conservatives and Independents as well as taking votes from Labour.

What I found most striking about the local elections was the collapse of Tory Midland England. Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire all fell to Reform, while Leicestershire now has a minority Reform administration. Even amid the Liberal Democrat triumph in Shropshire, Reform won enough seats to become the largest opposition group on the new council. While all these shires contain areas of widespread poverty and areas of Labour strength, it was the Conservative Party that took a hammering.

It seems to me that the Reform vote is best regarded as a protest vote – a concept we Liberals should be very much at home with, because we depended upon such a vote for survival and occasional upturns for decades. The late, great David Penhaligon was given to suggesting that a “Stuff Em All Party” would do well at the polls, and that is how Reform is seen by many voters, which is perhaps something we miss in our anxiety to condemn Nigel Farage’s views on race or the latest member found to have once espoused Fascist views on social media.

Whether you blame the economic situation it inherited or its lack of ambition, this Labour government is proving a sore disappointment to many who voted for it, while the thoughts of habitual Conservative voters can only be imagined. They now find themselves faced with a leader who is older than Tony Blair or David Cameron was when they came to power, yet comes over as a spiteful child. The majority of her MPs, meanwhile, hesitate to remove her for fear of who the party’s membership might land them with next. 

So you can see why there’s now a ready market for the Stuff Em All Party. Meanwhile, we Lib Dems can choose between being disappointed that our concentration in the affluent South means we are no longer viewed in that light, and taking this as a sign we are beginning to have a more coherent policy profile with voters.

Having managed to fake authenticity, Nigel Farage has made himself a better media performer than either Keir Starmer or Kemi Badenoch. It’s not so much that he comes over as being more fun to go for a drink with: it’s more that you can’t imagine the other two going for a drink at all. Added to that, now and then Farage does show political nous – he resisted the temptation to court Elon Musk and his money by embracing Tommy Robinson, sensing that one of his weaknesses is that he is already seen as too close to Trump and Putin.

In a thoughtful piece for Compass, Olly Glover, the Lib Dem MP for Didcot & Wantage, wrote of it becoming “increasingly common to encounter voters who are open about their intention to vote Reform. A surprising number of these were choosing between Reform and Lib Dem.”

He continued:

Voters’ reasons for considering Reform are more varied than might be assumed, with scepticism about net zero and climate change commitments now as common as concerns about immigration. 

Uniting them all is widespread cynicism and loss of confidence in the entire political system and the British state. This aspect is shared with many non-Reform voters too, but Reform have captured the bulk of the ‘anti-establishment’ sentiment.

And Dr Nathan Ley, a Lib Dem councillor from Abingdon, has written on his [now vanished] Substack that Reform is now:

The repository for some voters who are angry, dispossessed, downtrodden, as well as lots of people who are actually quite comfortable with their life, but feeling just a bit bored.

Labour is pinning its hopes on recovering these disaffected votes simply by governing better and producing visible improvements by the next election. This ambition does not seem to extend much beyond the NHS: elsewhere the government is continuing the austerity its members devoted fourteen years of their lives to condemning.

I wish Labour well in this endeavour, but they are going to have to find better communicators to put their case across. If Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves gave a fireside chat, you fear the fire would go out.

It’s hard to know what to advise the Conservatives to do. The most significant voting pattern of the 2016 referendum has always seemed to me the way that great swathes of prosperous Southern England voted Leave. You can blame David Cameron – if a prime minister puts a choice to voters in a referendum, they are entitled to assume that both paths are reasonable ones for the country to take – and I wouldn’t discount Dr Ley’s observation that voters were a bit bored. But what happened to all those Southern Tories with a fat stake in the status quo and a determination to keep things pretty much as they are?

I would look to the disappearance of responsible clerical and middle-management positions to technology and cost-cutting, and to the difficulty most people now experience in getting on the property ladder. David Boyle wrote a book about these trends, Broke: Who Killed the Middle Classes?, back in 2014. [The link is to a radio programme based on the book.]

Beyond this, there has been a collapse in Conservative values to such an extent that it’s possible to argue that the Conservative Party’s fundamental problem is that it’s no longer Conservative. It was said of Margaret Thatcher that she hoped her policies would produce more men like her father, but she ended up producing more men like her son.

And for Liberal Democrats? We should be wary of habits that it is too easy to learn online. One reason I distrust the argument that Reform is winning on working-class votes alone is that it plays into a snobbish view of the working class held by some people who imagine themselves to be left wing. The working class, they believe, is, like anyone who disagrees with them, stupid.

Such people write about, say, Lincolnshire as though they were Victorian explorers or missionaries, complete with a party of native bearers carrying their aspidistra and upright piano, but instead of cleft sticks to send messages, they use smartphones. They paint the county as impoverished, sexist, racist and any other ist you care to mention. This view is backed up by some small-town boys who praise themselves for having escaped it.

Yet Lincolnshire voted in line with the rest of the country in the 1975 referendum on continued membership of the European Economic Community – two-to-one in favour. And, years after that, Liberal candidates piled up huge votes in coming second in constituencies like Gainsborough & Horncastle and East Lindsey. In the latter, which is largely the Boston & Skegness constituency now represented by Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform, the Liberal Alliance polled over 20,000 votes at the 1987 general election. 

Politics is rarely as simple as online debate makes it appear.

John Pardoe endorses Ben Maguire, the Lib Dem candidate for North Cornwall

Ben Maguire is the Liberal Democrat in the North Cornwall constituency. Today he tweeted this endorsement from John Pardoe.

A sweet young thing asks: Who is John Pardoe?

My early Liberal heroes were David Penhaligon and John Pardoe, who both sat for Cornish constituencies.

Pardoe won North Cornwall from the Conservatives in 1966 and held it until 1979. From 1970 until he lost his seat, he was the Liberal Party's treasury spokesperson, and was known for his pessimistic view of the prospects of the British economy. As it was the Seventies, he generally proved to be right.

It's 45 years since Pardoe was defeated in North Cornwall, perhaps as a victim of Jeremy Thorpe's antics. Though he has resurfaced from time to time - notably, in 1987, when he was the manager of the Liberal-SDP Alliance general election campaign - he is pretty much a forgotten figure today.

But clearly not in North Cornwall, where his endorsement is still thought valuable.

He is also remembered in Calder's Sixth Law of Politics, which holds that every Liberal Democrat leadership election is a rerun of the 1976 Liberal Party contest between Pardoe and David Steel.

I first pointed to the importance of that contest in a post here from 2014:

One candidate (Steel) was orthodox, sensible and just a little dull. The other (Pardoe) was more charismatic, more open to new ideas and just a little unreliable in his judgement.

So in later contests Paddy Ashdown was a Pardoe and Alan Beith was a Steel. And Chris Huhne was a Pardoe and Ming Campbell and then Nick Clegg were Steels. In all these cases I voted for the Pardoe.

It doesn't always work: in 1999 there were five candidates. I suppose you could make a case for Charles Kennedy being a sort of Social Democrat Steel, but a clear Pardoe failed to emerge.

Can we project this pattern back into past? I don't know, but it tempting to see Asquith as a Steel and Lloyd George as a Pardoe.

And was Jo Grimond a Steel or a Pardoe? He seems to have combined the better qualities of both.

Anyway, I'm pleased to see that John Pardoe is still around.

David Penhaligon on Desert Island Discs

Embed from Getty Images

Having blogged about John Pardoe's appearance on Desert Island Discs, I'd better do the same for my other Liberal hero of the 1970s, David Penhaligon.

You can hear the full programme on the BBC website.

By the time David Penhaligon appeared on the show, it had been taken over from its originator Roy Plomley by Michael Parkinson.

And if the date of broadcast on the BBC site is correct (March 1987), then Penhaligon was already dead when it aired.

For he died on 22 December 1986 in an early-morning car crash as he was on the way to visit postal workers coping with the Christmas rush. Cornwall Live published an article about his life and death at the end of last year.

David's widow Annette Penhaligon later wrote a book about him. It is one of the best accounts I have read of the Liberal Party in the years before merger with the SDP.

What we owe to Charles Kennedy

View image | gettyimages.com

When David Penhaligon died so suddenly in 1986 the grief was widespread, reaching far beyond the Liberal Party. You hoped David had sensed how widely he was loved and respected.

I feel the same about Charles Kennedy today.

Despite his popularity and public persona of ‘chatshow Charlie’, I agree with David Boyle that Charles was a shy man. I wonder if this “the gap between appearance and reality” David identifies contributed in some way to his problems with drink.

Charles’s greatest service to the Liberal Democrats may have been his very first.

When the party was formed from the debris of David Steel’s grand strategy it was by no means certain that David Owen’s Continuing SDP would melt away so quickly. It was largely Charles’s decision to join the Lib Dems that made the difference.

Much of today’s media commentary on Charles’s life has dwelt on his opposition to the Iraq War, but it has not told the whole story.

He did not lead the party against Iraq: he was bounced into that position by the wider party. James Graham told some of this story in a post written in 2008 (five years after the events it describes).

But once he embraced opposition to the war Charles showed real political courage in holding to this position. It is worth remembering that, in the Commons, the Conservatives were even more hostile to him than Labour.

Quite what Charles believed in was always a bit of a mystery to me, even though I was on the party’s Federal Policy Committee when he chaired it as leader.

As I wrote for the Guardian when he resigned the leadership:

When Kennedy stood for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats in 1999, the West Highland Free Press - a radical newspaper published in his own constituency - remarked that people in London were beginning to ask what they had been asking for 15 years: what exactly does Charles Kennedy stand for? 

Though he won that contest and went on to lead the party for nearly seven years, we never really found out. 

But maybe what you saw with Charles was all there was to get. He held a range of sensible, moderate opinions – pro Europe, pro political reform – and held on to them.

The lesson may be that you don’t have to be a wild-eyed visionary or have a young family and look improbably youthful to win the public’s affection.

Charles's basic decency, leavened with that Highland charm we English are such suckers for, was enough.

Are all Liberal leadership contests Steel vs Pardoe?

#515846365 / gettyimages.com

I was not a member of the Liberal Party in 1976 because there was no branch in Market Harborough to recruit me.

But I knew I was a Liberal and that my favourite MPs were David Penhaligon and John Pardoe. So when Pardoe stood against David Steel for the leadership of the party I knew whose side I was on.

And you could argue that the 1976 contest set a pattern for later Liberal and Liberal Democrat leadership elections.

One candidate (Steel) was orthodox, sensible and just a little dull. The other (Pardoe) was more charismatic, more open to new ideas and just a little unreliable in his judgement.

So in later contests Paddy Ashdown was a Pardoe and Alan Beith was a Steel. And Chris Huhne was a Pardoe and Ming Campbell and then Nick Clegg were Steels. In all these cases I voted for the Pardoe.

It doesn't always work: in 1999 there were five candidates. I suppose you could make a case for Charles Kennedy being a sort of Social Democrat Steel, but a clear Pardoe failed to emerge.

Can we project this pattern back into past? I don't know, but it tempting to see Asquith as a Steel and Lloyd George as a Pardoe.

And was Jo Grimond a Steel or a Pardoe? He seems to have combined the better qualities of both.

Remembering David Penhaligon

This project, hosted by the Cornish Audio Visual Archive, Cornish Story and the Institute of Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter, aims to record the memories of friends and acquaintances of David Penhaligon – MP for Truro from 1974 to 1986.

We aim to build a website which will host the recorded memories, audio or video, of interviews with those that wish to contribute to the project. Many of these interviews will come from his native Cornwall, whether from school friends at Truro School, at Cornwall Technical College, when he was an engineer at Holman Brothers or as the sub-post master at Chacewater.

Of course, most of the interviews will focus on his time as a Liberal candidate, then Member of Parliament for Truro. Penhaligon first contested Totnes in 1970 and then Truro twice in 1974, winning at the second attempt. He increased his narrow majority in 1979 and again in 1983. Many Cornish residents will have memories of these elections and of David as a hard-working local MP in Cornwall and we really want to capture these memories, however personal.

To achieve a credible picture of David Penhaligon we want as many interviews as possible, whether you met him once when he knocked on your door in an election campaign or if you were close friends. We want to make this website an online resource for local and historical research into one of Cornwall’s most famous voices.

Read more and donate on Rembering David Penhaligon.

Susan Penhaligon leaves the Liberal Democrats

The Western Morning News reports that the actress Susan Penhaligon has left the Liberal Democrats:

"I feel slightly betrayed by the Lib Dems by going along with the 'bedroom tax'. And the NHS reforms seem like a step towards privatisation. More competition in the NHS would be a disaster."

She also reveals that she is the second cousin of the Liberal MP David Penhaligon, who died in 1986:

"The Liberal Democrats are not the old Liberal Party. I think David Penhaligon would be turning in his grave at some of the things that are happening. I don't like the Lib Dems being with the Conservatives, and I think other Lib Dem voters think the same."

David can't answer for himself. But one of the ironies of West Country politics is that the region's Liberals have always been fierce enemies of the Conservative localy while appearing rather right wing to Liberals in the wider party. How this plays out at the next election, we shall see.

David Penhaligon died just before Christmas when his car skidded on an icy road after he had got up early to visit local postal workers.

As my favourite Harborough Tory councillor, Bill Crane from Lutterworth, said to me at the time: "If he had given his wife a squeeze, turned over and gone back to sleep, he would still be here now."

I realise that David Penhaligon will be little more than a name to many younger Liberal Democrats. You can get an idea of the man from the Desert Island Discs programme he recorded a few weeks before he died.

Queen, Liberals and badgers

Adrian Sanders tweeted this picture of himself and Brian May earlier today. It was taken at a Westminster meeting to plan the campaign against the cull of badgers.

It reminded me that an earlier post on this blog featured a future member of Queen and a future Liberal MP.

Six of the Best 253

"David Penhaligon is one my heroes. You can’t be a Cornishman and not have a soft spot for the man. He had the passion, humour, grace and humility which all us Cornish like to think typify the best of our county." Liberal Burblings on a great Liberal MP.

Lester Holloway asks what Tony Blair is doing in Africa.

"This summer, the city will become a fortress, protected by the largest aircraft carrier in the British Royal Navy, Eurofighter Typhoon jets, flying marksmen, more than 23,000 security personnel (including 13,500 British soldiers), and an array of new cameras added to a city that was already among the world's most heavily surveilled. As part of a $30.2 million contract, the American security company Rapiscan has delivered over 2,700 scanners to provide airport-level security for up to 200,000 visitors a day to the Olympic Park alone. Administering all of the searches and scans will be private guards hired by the U.K.-based security firm G4S, formerly known as Securicor." Fortune looks at the lock down of London for the Olympics.

Sock Puppets, a new report from the Institute of Economic Affairs, argues that when government funds the lobbying of itself it is subverts democracy and debases the concept of charity.

Local government cuts to archaeology matter to all of us, argues Jo Caruth on History Workshop Online.

In A City Living has a magnificent archive of old photographs of Liverpool.

Queen drummer Roger Taylor's first gig was organised by Truro Liberals

Or very nearly his first gig at least.

Trawling the net I came across the blog Queen in Cornwall, which tells us:

Prior to joining 'Smile' and forming 'Queen' Roger Taylor gigged all over Cornwall with his band 'The Reaction'. This blog is an attempt to document these musicians and concerts in preparation for an exhibition at the Royal Cornwall Museum...

One post on this blog is devoted to:

a do organised by the Liberal Association in the City Hall, 17th December, 1964. This was Roger Taylors first proper band and it is possible that this newspaper clipping from 24th December was the first time his musical efforts were ever recognised in the press.

The MC at this event? A young village postmaster by the name of David Penhaligon.

Lib Dem Conference 2009: An armchair view

It takes more than a failure to attend the Conference to stop me writing for Liberal Democrat News. This column appears to today's issue.

Calder not at Conference

Party leaders used to warn their members against passing outlandish policies at Conference because “the world is watching us”. In the case of the Liberal Party and then the Liberal Democrats, it generally turned out that the world had better things to do.

Which was odd. Because my first political memories come from the days when the BBC cleared its daytime schedules to bring the nation uninterrupted coverage of the party conferences. Even Watch with Mother was displaced.

So if you were off school with a cold you got Ian Mikardo instead of Mary, Mungo and Midge. Pogles’ Wood was cut down to make way for Sally Oppenheim. And the combined forces of Russell Johnston, David Penhaligon and Alan Beith trampled all over Camberwick Green.

Perhaps it was always a controversial move. Informed sources suggest that as early as 1965 this rescheduling was described by one angry BBC insider as “flobba lobba lob”.

Whatever the truth of that, viewing this week’s Liberal Democrat from Market Harborough rather than Bournemouth has shown me how much things have changed since those days. And not only because it is now the Lib Dem leaders who provide the outlandish policies.

There is still wall-to-wall television coverage, but it is now found only on the BBC Parliament channel. Watching it there makes you feel a little ashamed of your specialised interest. You half expect the screen to freeze after five minutes and demand your credit card number.

What coverage remains on the main channels hardly shows the debates at all. Instead you get a pundit telling you what a politician has just said or what she is about to say or what you could hear her saying now if only the pundit would shut up and let you listen.

So the best place to see the Liberal Democrat Conference today is on the main news bulletins.

That is a great victory for us, but it is also a challenge. As the last Euro elections showed, a Liberal Democrat vote is no longer an anti-establishment vote. If people vote are going for us in the future it will be because they have heard what we have to say and like what we offer.

Which brings us back to those outlandish policies.

Lord Bonkers on Matthew Taylor, Nick Clegg and GQ

From Liberator 325.

Monday
Well, well, well. So the story has finally come out. I suppose it was inevitable.

The name "Percy Harris" will mean little to my younger readers, but he was quite the fellow in his day. Percy was elected in the Liberal interest at a by-election at Market Harborough during the Great War and was a frequent guest at the Hall in those dark days. The soundest of fellows, he stood by Asquith in 1918 and was thus denied the "coupon" by Lloyd George and his Tory allies, ensuring his defeat. He soon re-emerged as a Liberal MP in the East End and his strong following amongst the Pearly Kings and Queen (many of whom could drink more wine than he'd ever seen) ensured that he held that seat until 1945. The point of my story is that Percy’s granddaughter (a charming girl) fell pregnant during the louche days of the 1960s and a baby boy war born. Despite my strongest urgings, the family saw to it that he was adopted by a kindly scriptwriter and his wife and I assumed that was the last I would hear of the business.

A few years later, however, news reached me that a small boy had won the All Cornwall Primary Schools L. T. Hobhouse Recitation Contest at a preternaturally early age, and I soon guessed who the child he was. It was thus no surprise when, upon the sad and untimely death of David Penhaligon, Master Taylor (for it was he) emerged as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Truro. He soon proved a useful addition to our front bench (bedtime permitting). Now the tale is all over this morning’s newspapers; I spend the day at the Home for Well-Behaved Orphans refreshing my memory on the pedigrees of our young residents.

Tuesday
To Windsor for a banquet in honour of the French President M. Sarkozy. In the past I have found our Gallic cousins Rather Hard Work - one got the impression that General De Gaulle could never quite forgive Britain for liberating France - but the present incumbent proves a jolly little fellow. I am particularly taken by his wife, whom I rescue from the Duke of Edinburgh as is telling her (in more detail than is strictly necessary) the best way to disembowel a stag. We get on famously until the Prime Minister - a dour Scotsman by the name of Brown - muscles in on our conversation and tries to interest her in "post-neoclassical endogenous growth theory". I soon get my revenge: Brown asks me the way to the dining room and I send him off through the billiard room down the back stairs and out into the kitchen garden, before taking the delightful Mme Sarkozy into dinner on my arm. The Queen is amused.

Wednesday
I come across a magazine called GQ and, when I am told that the initials stand for Gentlemen’s Quarterly, I purchase a copy as it sounds My Sort Of Thing. Imagine my delight when, upon perusing the contents page, I find that there is an interview with out new leader. I order a pot of Earl Grey and sit down to read it, but I am soon disconcerted. I find that Clegg makes light of the notorious incident in which he set fire to a priceless collection of rare cacti -- I don’t know if they sell GQ in Rutland, but if they do it is lucky for Clegg that Meadowcroft’s choice of reading matter runs more to The Horticulturalist’s Journal. Then - dear God! - Clegg goes on to boast of the number of women he has slept with, which is something no gentleman should ever do. I certainly should not have done it myself when there was talk of my leading the Liberal Party - particularly if I thought there were any chance of the magazine falling into the hands of the first Lady Bonkers.

Thursday
To Brick Lane for the launch of the Liberal Youth, and not without a little trepidation as the name conjours up visions of footer bags, hearty folk singing and long hikes through the forests of the East End. I am thus reassured, when I arrive, to find a party in full swing and not a pair of lederhosen in sight.

Friday
I settle beside my hearth for a long awaited treat; a tumbler of Auld Johnston - that most prized of Highland malts - is at my elbow and a hardback copy of my old friend Ming Campbell’s memoirs is open on my lap. I begin reading and am fascinated to learn of Ming’s schooldays in Glasgow and his exploits as an Olympic sprinter, and chuckle at his anecdotes of life at the Edinburgh Bar. Yet when he turns to are former leader, poor Charles Kennedy, and his struggle with the demon drink, I find my attention wandering. When he turns to Kennedy again I almost nod off. When he turns to him a third time… I awake to find that the fire has burned low and my setters have put themselves to bed. In short, it is a fascinating read, but why Ming’s publishers insisted that he bore us all with constant talk of Kennedy I cannot imagine.

Saturday
To Rutland International Airport for the opening of its new terminal. Vast airships nuzzle the terminal tower having arrived from as far afield as Croydon, Königsberg, the Straits Settlements, Newfoundland and Bechuanaland; attentive footmen carry ones bags to ones Bentley; the Amy Johnson Bar dispenses pints of Smithson & Greaves Northern Bitter to all-comers. In short, it is everything a modern airport terminal should be. I hope the people at Heathrow will take notice.

Sunday
Lunch at the Hall with Matthew Taylor -- so much more enjoyable now that he is able to take wine with his meal. I tell him all about his great-grandfather and the Harborough by-election of 1916. I am never to blow my own trumpet, as my readers will know, but I trust that I give a fair account of my part in getting the Liberal vote out in Cranoe, Glooston and Carlton Curlieu.
Later a caller arrives with tidings of a small girl who has won the North Wales Paraphrase T. H. Green Without Falling Asleep Award for the second time at the age of eight. Here we go again.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10. He opened his diary to Jonathan Calder.

Norman Baker and the Uckfield to Lewes line

A friend of mine once attended a meeting addressed by the late David Penhaligon in the days when he Liberal transport spokesman. Someone asked what Liberal transport policy was and Penhaligon replied: "1. Keep the Truro-Falmouth branch open."

These days we have wider horizons and grander job titles, but our shadow transport secretary Norman Baker also has a constituency railway project close to his heart: the reopening of the line between Uckfield and Lewes.

The Argus reports that Network Rail has signed a contract with East Sussex County Council agreeing to carry out an investigation into whether the line could be reopened. Norman Baker is quoted as saying:

"I've campaigned for more than 20 years to reopen this line. To me it's a no-brainer.

"At the moment the Lewes to London line is at maximum capacity every rush hour. This would create an alternative route that might remove some of the pressure."

There is more about the line and its prospects of revival on the Wealden Line site, from which I borrowed this photograph of the disused trackbed at Barcombe Mills.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Matthew Taylor gets a long spoon

Friday
Matthew Taylor arrives at the Hall to pick my brains about rural housing. I am pleased to be able to tell him that there is a good turnover of properties hereabouts, with the result that people seldom have to wait long for a cottage. Only yesterday, for instance, I had to evict a labourer and his family after he been heard making favourable comments about David Cameron in the Bonkers‘ Arms, and I am sure that my Bailiff will have seen to it that someone else is occupying the property by now.

How times passes! Taylor a member of the great and good, and asked to chair some sort of Government inquiry! It seems only yesterday that he was sitting in parliamentary party meetings doing his maths homework. Nowadays, of course, one would simply toss it over to Cable or Webb or Laws for them to dash off in a moment, but when young Matthew was first elected it fell to me to help the poor child wrestle with the internal angles of a penhaligon.

Before he returns to Cornwall I take him on a tour of the Hall, and when we reach the kitchen Cook insists on presenting him with a long spoon ("I hear you are working with that Gordon Brown," she says. "You’ll be wanting this.") and I daren’t record what Meadowcroft says when we surprise him in the Orchid House. I thought the gift of a pitchfork was a nice touch, though.

Back to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.