John Bodkin Adams: The Harold Shipman of the 1950s

With the Conservative candidate in the Wakefield by-election having drawn an analogy between the party's previous MP for the seat and Dr Harold Shipman, my mind has returned to the bad doctor's equivalent from the 1950s, Dr John Bodkin Adams.

Though he was acquitted of murder at the Old Bailey, the number of Eastbourne widows who changed their wills in Bodkin Adams' favour, only to expire after his next visit, leaves little doubt about what was really going on.

In fact the video above suggests the evidence from the police investigation of him reveals that he may be Britain's worst ever serial killer.

Bodkin Adams has appeared on this blog three times.

First, I revealed that the chaplain of All Saints Hospital, Eastbourne, at the time of Bodkin Adams' arrest was the Revd Hubert Brasier, better known today as the father of Theresa May.

Talking of the Conservative Party, Bodkin Adams was the doctor of Harold Macmillan's brother-in-law the Duke of Devonshire and was attending him as he died. 

This video, as many modern accounts do, ties that in with the fact that one of Macmillan's children was fathered by the Tory peer Bob Boothby, and tries to tie that into the story as a reason for the Establishment engineering an acquittal.

I've seen this theory elsewhere, but never much evidence to suggest it's true.

Besides, Labour has its connections with this story too. The doctor called as his main expert witness onr John B. Harman. He was the president of the Medical Defence Union and the father of Harriet Harman.

Revelaing that face was my second mention of Bodkin Adams here. The third was to reveal that the man who put the police on to him was the variety star Leslie Henson, because he had suspicions about the death of an old friend.

Leslie Henson was the father of the actor Nicky Henson and the grandfather of Countryfile's Adam Henson.

Whether any of them have worked with Timothy West, I don't know, but you can find him playing Bodkin Adams in a dramatised version of the affair on YouTube. And there's an enjoyable review by Craig Brown of a book on the case.

The well-worn path from Liberty to being a Labour hack

When I was a teenager and had already decided I was a Liberal, two of the big names in civil liberties campaigning were Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman of Liberty - or the National Council for Civil Liberties as it then was.

Twenty years later they were both impeccably on-message New Labour ministers, sharing Tony Blair's exasperation with "libertarian nonsense".

Another 20 years on and I find Shami Chakrabarti is set on the same path. As one viewer put it last night:

It's incredibly sad to see Shami Chakrabarti the former head of Liberty, whose aim is to protect rights, actively supporting the removal of people's Freedom of Movement. Such a disappointment. #bbcqt #PeoplesVote

— You Broke It Mate (@YouBrokeItMate) December 6, 2018

The moral, I suppose, is that you should be wary of having heroes - or heroines.

Did Kemi Badenoch hack Harriet Harman's website?

Embed from Getty Images

From the Mail on Sunday today:

A Tory MP tipped as a future Prime Minister has admitted breaking the law by hacking into a Labour opponent’s website. 

Kemi Badenoch, a newly appointed vice-chairman of the party, confessed that she launched the cyber-attack on the Labour MP’s site in order to write pro-Tory propaganda under their name. 

Hacking into websites is a criminal offence – and can be punished with a prison sentence of up to two years.

A youthful prank that can be forgiven after a good telling off?

No, Badenoch was 28 when she carried out the attack.

As to the victim, Aaron Bastani suggests it was Harriet Harman.

He links to a cached copy of a deleted page from the Guido Fawkes site that laughed at an attack on Harman's site.

Sure enough, the attack took place 10 years ago, when Badenoch was 28.

Like Ben Bradley, incidentally, Badenoch is a vice chairman of the Conservative Party.

Later.

.@KemiBadenoch has written to me apologising. I have accepted her apology.

— Harriet Harman (@HarrietHarman) April 8, 2018

Harriet Harman, Theresa May and John Bodkin Adams

Embed from Getty Images

Remember this post from June?

Though he was acquitted of murder at the Old Bailey, there seems little doubt that Eastbourne's Dr John Bodkin Adams was a serial killer along the lines of Harold Shipman. 

The town's rich widows had a habit of changing their wills in his favour and then expiring shortly afterwards. 

As well as having a general practice, Bodkin Adams worked at All Saints Hospital. 

And who was chaplain of All Saints Hospital, Eastbourne, at the time of Bodkin Adams' arrest in 1956? 

The Revd Hubert Brasier, better known today as the father of Theresa May.

The doctor's acquittal was aided by his main expert witness, John B. Harman.

As Wikipedia tells it:

Doctor John Bodkin Adams was tried in 1957 for the murder of an 81-year-old patient, Edith Alice Morrell. Harman was called as the defence's main expert witness. He gave evidence that though the deceased was being prescribed high amounts of heroin and morphine by her general practitioner, it was entirely justified under the circumstances and that it would have done more harm to the patient if the treatment was discontinued. 

During cross-examination, however, it was established: that Harman had himself only ever worked as a general practitioner for a total of two weeks. He had only ever treated a handful of drug addicts – before the war. He had never seen 'spasms' caused by drug addiction, despite acting them out for the court in detail – he had only ever read about them. And furthermore, despite being a witness for the defence, he claimed he had at no time talked to Adams about his treatment of the patient.

John Harman was the father of Harriet Harman.

Join the dots, sheeple. Join the dots.

Labour's confusion over its own leadership contest

View image | gettyimages.com

Here is Harriet Harman reported by BBC News today:

Harriet Harman has said 3,000 alleged "cheats" have so far been excluded from voting in the Labour leadership contest, with more expected. 

The acting Labour leader said: "It is not funny or clever for people from other parties to try to cheat their way into our system." 

And only people who supported the "aims and values" of the Labour Party would be allowed to take part.

But she adopted a different tone back in May. A Labour Party press release quoted her as follows:

"The public - not just Labour members - will be able to ask questions of leadership and deputy leadership candidates at hustings events. 

"Hustings will be staged in the towns and suburbs where Labour hoped to win in the general election, but where the party failed to make inroads. 

"Labour members will be encouraged to bring supporters of other parties, or non-voters, to hear speeches by the contenders."

It's seems pluralism's flowering in Labour soil lasted only a short time.

As Nick Tyrone argued recently, Labour's problem is that it never decided whether its £3 supporter rate was meant to turn its leadership contest into a sort of open primary or not.

Harriet Harman, the NCCL and PIE

People’s incredulity that Harriet Harman might have something to explain or apologise for over relations between the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) arose from hatred for the Daily Mail and a willingness to accept Harman at her own high estimation.

Another factor, though, was that some younger people did not realise just how different social attitudes were on the left in the 1970s.

It happened that I discussed this era in a book chapter that I published in 2005.

This is an era in which books with titles like Escape from Childhood were written. John Holt’s work contains chapters on, among other subjects, ‘The right to vote.’ ‘The right to work’ and ‘The right to drive’. Reading him today it is hard to resist the idea that Holt was not so much calling for a change in our attitude towards children as calling for the abolition of the very concept of childhood. See for evidence his rather stern chapter on ‘How children exploit cuteness’. 

The chapter that reads most strangely today is the one entitled ‘The law, the young, and sex’. One would not, I think, come across a passage like the following in any current book:

Some people have voiced to me the fear that if it were legal for an adult to have sex with a consulting child, many young people would be exploited by unscrupulous older ones. The image here is of the innocent young girl and the dirty old man; few worry about the young boy having sex with an older woman. Here, too, we are caught with the remains of old myths – in this case that only men were sexual, that women were pure and above it – from which it follows that any young girl having sex with an older man must necessarily be his victim.

This is not a simplistic call for the ‘sexual liberation’ of children; if anything, it is an anguished examination of Holt’s own internal conflicts on the idea. But such ideas were in the air in the 1970s. When I worked in Birmingham, which dates it as late as 1981 or 1982, pamphlets from the Paedophile Information Exchange [PIE] could still be found among a tableful of literature from other municipally approved good causes in the Central Library. 

There is some coverage of this period in Christian Wolmar’s book on childcare scandals, Forgotten Children, but he treats it largely as a plot by a few paedophiles to infiltrate more respectable movements. This approach tends to underestimate the extent to which a broader strand of educated opinion was prepared at least to entertain the idea of something like the sexual liberation of children.

Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman were the public face of the NCCL in the 1970s, but ultimately they were its employees , so it is not clear how far they were responsible for the organisation’s policies. (Jack Dromey flew beneath my political radar in those days.)

But I note that Patricia Hewitt has broken her silence and apologised for the NCCL’s stance in those days. I find this preferable to Harriet Harman’s self-righteousness - however much she hates the Daily Mail.

Times have moved on, thank goodness. As I concluded with something of a rhetorical flourish in that chapter, the problem with abolishing the concept of childhood is that you also abolish that of child abuse.

Not that everything has improved over the past 30 years or so. We have made parents nervous of photographing their own children at sports days, but the most vulnerable children of all - those in public care - do not seem to be much better protected.

The Woolas Affair: Where is Ed Miliband?

Harriet Harman is coming under attack from Labour backbenchers because Phil Woolas was suspended from the party following the election court's finding that he had knowingly lied about his Liberal Democrat opponent.

So beleagured has she become today that her husband, the newly elected Labour MP and former trade union leader Jack Dromey, has felt obliged to tour the nation's television studios as a slightly improbable spokesman for truth and decency.

But where is the Labour leader in all this?

Is Ed Miliband silent because he too lacks authority over Labour MPs? After all, he was not their choice as leader.

Perhaps they share the widespread view of him as a bright sixth former? Though to be accurate, he is more like that sixth former's ink-stained younger brother.

Meanwhile, the theory that Ed Miliband exists for only 30 minutes a week - at prime minister's questions on Wednesday lunchtimes - will be finding new adherents.

Later. As discussed in the comments, Ed Miliband is on paternity leave. We shall see if he makes a decisive return to the scene when the two weeks are over.

Even later. Michael Crick has offered a different analysis on Newsnight. There is considerable anger amongst older Labour MPs at the strong line Harman and Gordon Brown took with them over expernses in the last parliament. The Woolas affair and Ed Miliband's absence has given them an opportunity to vent that anger.

Much later than that. I conceded too much to my critics. Ed Miliband broke off from his paternity leave to criticise Lord Young's comments on the recession. If he had time to do that then he had time to issue a clear condemnation of Woolas's campaign tactics.

So I was right after all. Miliband chose to hide behind Harriet Harman so that he did not have to condemn Woolas and risk upsetting Labour MPs.

Should Harriet Harman be prosecuted for her remarks about Danny Alexander?

You will have heard that today Harriet Harman referred to Danny Alexander as a "ginger rodent" in a speech to a Labour conference in Oban.

To her credit, she later withdrew the remark and apologised. But it does raise an interesting question. Could Harriet Harman be prosecuted under the Equalities Act that she herself did so much to bring on to the statute book?

To begin with a couple of sources that not everyone will trust...

At the start of the month the Daily Mail published an article on this act, which was adopted and passed by the Coalition. Under the headline "Death of the office joke: Coalition enacts Harriet's PC equality law which means ANYONE can sue for ANYTHING that offends them" it reported:

It creates the controversial legal concept of ‘third party harassment’, under which workers will be able to sue over jokes and banter they find offensive – even if the comments are aimed at someone else and they weren’t there at the time the comments were made.

They can sue if they feel the comments ‘violate their dignity’ or create an ‘intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment’.

A one-off incident is enough to sue – there is no need for the ‘victim’ to have warned the perpetrator that their comments are unwelcome.

While an article by Tim Black for Spiked argued that the Act does not simply consolidate existing legislation but introduces a number of new offences in the field:

The most notable of these is the concept of ‘third-party harrassment’. So while it was already an offence for an employer to pick on an employee on the basis of race or gender, an employer will now be liable for any employee ‘harrassment’, too. This means that if someone at work feels that someone else’s comments ‘violate their dignity’ or create an ‘intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment’, they can sue their employer.

As I said, these two sources will not satisfy everyone - for the record I have written twice for Spiked but never for the Daily Mail - so here is a less controversial one.

An article on the BBC website - "The new Equality Act and you" - says:

Harassment will have the same definition across all strands of discrimination.

The focus will be on preventing "unwanted conduct which has the purpose or effect of violating a person's dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment".

A one-off incident may amount to harassment, and so the victim need not have made the perpetrator aware that the conduct was unwanted.

The definition covers conduct which is "related to" a protected characteristic - a protected characteristic being sex, race, religious belief etc.

This means that there is no need for the particular employee's characteristics to be the reason for the unwanted conduct in order to trigger liability.

I take this to mean that because many Scottish people have red hair Harman's remarks should be seen as racist, even if she had no intention to offend or harass the Scots.

And are the remarks offensive? As I understand it, if Danny Alexander finds them offensive, then they are offensive. The question of Harman's intent does not arise.

Besides, the Conservative MP Stewart Jackson who, as he points out, shares a workplace with Harman and Alexander, has already tweeted that he finds the remarks offensive. That is the end of the matter, isn't it?

I was surprised and disappointed when the Coalition passed Harman's Equalities Act unexamined and unamended. I suppose the need to detoxify the Conservative brand took precedence over any considerations of liberty for the masses.

But as far as I can see there is an open and shut case for Harman to be prosecuted under it. Can anyone give any good reasons why she should not be?

Brokeback Coalition jokes are so gay

David Davis has been overheard making jokes about Clegg and Cameron at the Boot & Flogger wine bar in South London. (This is a venue where I have been overheard myself, but that is a story for another day.)

Quite why this is seen as an important news story, I do not understand. But well done to Nick Clegg for handling it so capably today.

What I do know is that to observe that two men like each other and work together well and then say, in effect, "hur, hur, hur, they must be gay" is cheap and ignorant.

That is "ignorant" as we use the word in Leicestershire. The person referred to is ill mannered as well as ill informed or ill educated.

In this case I suggest this observation comes from frustrated ambition. For no very obvious reason Davis has convinced himself that he ought to be Tory leader and holds a grievance against David Cameron as a result.

Still, Harriet Harman makes similar cracks about partnerships and marriages every time she leads for Labour at prime minister's questions. So being the niece of a Countess is no guarantee that you will not be cheap and ignorant.

John Bercow set to defeat the parliamentary mujahideen

Writing on the Guardian website (and in tomorrow's paper), Patrick Wintour predicts that John Bercow will be re-elected as speaker of the Commons tomorrow "despite the opposition of a small group of Conservative diehards led by Nadine Dorries who are trying to depose him".

Wintour says that Bercow has the support of David Cameron, Nick Clegg and the acting Labour leader Harriet Harman, and that he will "play a key role in trying to adapt parliament to the reality that the Liberal Democrats have joined the government, so leaving parliament with

only one large formal opposition party".

He adds:

One source said that if 20 or 30 MPs did vote against Bercow, more than most people predict, the outcome "will be cathartic, forcing a small parliamentary mujahideen to recognise finally that Bercow is legitimate figure".

What happens if there is a hung parliament?

Martin Kettle has an interesting piece in today's Guardian looking at what might happen after a hung parliament:

The idea canvassed by Armstrong and Lord Crowther-Hunt in 1974 that the Queen might consult some national elders – Harold Macmillan and Manny Shinwell were suggested – and might even invite Willie Whitelaw or Roy Jenkins to form a government was fanciful even then.

Today such a "Miliband option", as it is optimistically dubbed, would be even more for the birds. If Brown was persuaded to step down in order to enable Labour to govern, there is no way the palace could invite any Labour politician except Harriet Harman to form a government.

In earlier times, private soundings might have produced consensus prime ministers like Churchill or Douglas-Home. Today parties are encumbered with more rules. If Brown goes, Harman automatically becomes Labour leader until a party leadership election is held. The Miliband option is a non-starter.

In short, the idea of a Miliband option is bananas.

Isn't the British constitution great?

Two short quotations from reports that went up on the Guardian website this afternoon.

On Heathrow:

Hoon insisted that a vote was not needed because the decision was "quasi-judicial". The government's decision was made in the interest of the country and not just Londoners, Hoon told McDonnell. "Heathrow is a national airport," he said.

On plans to exempt MPs' expense claims from freedom of information legislation:

Harriet Harman, the leader of the house, is to use a special parliamentary order that can become law within 24 hours after being debated by MPs and peers next week.

I get the impression that in Britain the government can short cut or dispense with democracy whenever it threatens to become inconvenient.

If MPs have any sense (and I grant you that a big if...) they will vote against this exemption of their expense claims. And Hoon is talking nonsense. Local councillors have a "quasi-judicial" role in planning matters, but they still take votes.

Mr Speaker Martin's last chance

The current Speaker has once last chance not to go down in history as one of the most partisan and discredited figures to occupy the role.

Iain Dale reports that Harriet Harman's plans for a meeting to discuss the Speaker's statement on the arrest of Damian Green have been leaked to the Conservatives. It is clear from the memo that she is trying to tell him what he should say. And it is clear from the list of those invited that she is acting purely out of party interest.

As Iain says:

Invited to the meeting are Jacqui Smith and Jack Straw, as well as Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell, Jill Pay, the Serjeant at Arms and the Parliamentary Clerk, Malcolm Jack and a representative from the Speaker's Office. Strangely the Tories and LibDems have not been invited.

The Speaker should tell Harman that he will decide with whom he discuss his statement and he will decide what he will say.

Sadly, I doubt that he has the courage, the independence or the intellect to do so.

Harriet Harman breaks ranks on Damian Green arrest

The leader of the house has become the first cabinet minister to distance herself from the arrest of the Tory immigration spokesman. The BBC reports:

Harriet Harman has said she is "very concerned" by the arrest of Conservative immigration spokesman Damian Green.

Ms Harman also said she understood MPs' anger at the way police officers had raided Mr Green's Parliamentary and constituency bases.

And she said protection of MPs' offices from police raids must be reviewed.

A sign of the way the wind is blowing?

Charles Clarke condemns Just William politics

Charles Clarke has an aricle on the New Statesman website - I assume it will be in Friday's magazine.

If I read it correctly, a shorter version would run: "You don't have to be part of a Blairite plot to think that Gordon Brown is a disaster and to want to get rid of him to save the party."

I suspect he hopes that when Brown does go Labour will turn to an experienced former minister who is not identified closely with either Blair or Brown. And who has large ears.

Just William politics sounds the sort of thing that this blog would approve of. Clarke condemns it thus:

As various commentators consider Labour's prospects, the term "Blairite" is being deployed to characterise the policies and personalities of some who question the party's current direction and urge Labour to face the future. Like "Thatcherite", the word is not used kindly. "Blairite" (even "über-Blairite") is a lazy and inaccurate shorthand. It is intended not to illuminate but to diminish, marginalise and insult. It was, for example, the stock phrase used by the Brown political briefing team to traduce David Miliband's Guardian article in early August.

Moreover, this misleading language damages the vital need for Labour to move on to new, post-Blair ground. Those journalists and politicians who use it are fighting the last political struggle, the War of the Tony Blair Succession, in a way that owes rather more to Just William and the Hubert Laneites than to the challenges of modern British politics.

On this analysis, presumably, Harriet Harman is Violet Elizabeth Bott.

Free Schools and the school-leaving age

My House Points column from today's Liberal Democrat News.

A lot of Balls

Nick Clegg is right, of course. Allowing parents and community groups to set up Free Schools is just what is needed.

For far too long, we have been stuck in a mind-set where there are good schools and bad schools– which class a school falls into being largely determined by the social class of the children who go there – and all we have to offer are complicated schemes for divvying up those places more equitably.

The thought that parents forced to send their children to a bad school might be better off seeking an alternative – or even providing one themselves – seems to have been beyond us. At last that is changing.

So well done, Nick. And as House Points is always loyal, you won't catch this column saying it is a pity you didn't make more of these ideas during the leadership election.

Meanwhile at Westminster, Ed Balls is trying to raise the school leaving age – or at least the education leaving age – to 18. This is a strange ambition in a society where 16 is rapidly becoming the age of majority in the way that 18 and 21 used to be.

As Michael Gove pointed out, at 16 you can marry, pay taxes, volunteer for military service and consent to sexual relations. As David Laws pointed out you can also change your name, pilot an aeroplane, gamble, join a trade union, leave home and apply for a passport. And Harriet Harman talks enthusiastically about giving 16-year-olds the vote.

So why is the government seeking to criminalise young people aged 16 and over who don’t want to continue their education?

In part it is because Labour has always overestimated the role that the education system plays in economic success. It will never be possible for government to know what skills the economy will need in a few years’ time. And in part it is because Labour just enjoys telling other people what to do.

But mostly, research suggests, it is because the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families wants others to experience a little of what he was made to suffer. What can it have been like going through public school with a name like Balls?

A ballroom dancer or snooker professional

Today's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News.

Identity crisis

On Monday a woman Home Secretary took questions for the first time. It was a piece of parliamentary history, but passed off with little comment.

In part this was because Jacqui Smith had already made a statement after the recent attempted bombings. Yet it remains a mystery that, though she has achieved far more, Smith attracts little of the sisterly adulation that surrounds Harriet Harman.

And maybe having a woman in this role will make a difference. The questions covered the usual depressing litany - antisocial behaviour, terrorism, child pornography - but Smith did not promise a single new law in response.

Charles Clarke or John Reid would each have committed themselves to half a dozen new bills before the hour was up.

One problem Smith will have to tackle is one of her junior ministers, Liam Byrne. Dapper and balding, in an earlier age he would have been a ballroom dancer or snooker professional. Today, he is an expert on immigration.

And doesn't he know it? True, he has been doing that job for a while and Jacqui Smith is new to her post, so from time to time it is reasonable for him to whisper advice to her while MPs are asking their questions.

But Byrne does it every time. And he makes considerable efforts to be inconspicuous. In fact, he makes sure that everyone in the House sees how inconspicuous he is being.

So Smith promises to be a breath of fresh air, but don't get carried away. When Nick Clegg asked a full, detailed analysis of the costs of the identity card project from beginning to end, she gave a long, rambling answer that could have been paraphrased in one word: No.

It was good to hear Nick keeping up the pressure on ID cards. There is a danger that we will decide to be "realistic" and endorse the things just as the public comes to realise what they will involved. The long journeys to register and be photographed feel like the sort of humiliation that conquerors inflict upon a conquered people.

The more policies we have that differentiate us from the other parties the better. Long may opposition to ID cards remain one of them.

Lord Bonkers on the end of Blair and much else

Liberator 319 is now with subscribers - at least mine arrived this morning - so it is time to post the latest diary from Rutland's most celebrated peer.

Incidentally, issue 319 is a cracker, so why not visit the magazine's website and subscribe?

Sunday

It began with the bells of St Asquith’s pealing across the Rutland countryside; soon spontaneous Morris dancing had broken out on the village green and before long there were unconfirmed reports of oxen being roasted whole from as far afield as Marston Trussell and Cropwell Bishop. I immediately took charge of events, declaring a half-holiday at the village school for the following day and ordering free pints of Smithson & Greaves Northern Bitter to be distributed to all-comers at the Bonkers’ Arms.

In short, no one hereabouts will forget the day that Tony Blair announced his resignation as Prime Minster and Leader of the Labour Party. For my own part, I have not laughed so much since King Leopold of the Belgians died.

Monday

I suffer something of a disturbed night – too mature a Stilton, perhaps? It can hardly have been the champagne, Smithson & Greaves or Auld Johnston – and scenes from my past scurry before my eyes: Jo Grimond quoting Napoleon’s advice to his marshalls that they should march their troops "towards the sound of gunfire" (I had suggested that he employ Nelson’s "No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy," but he chose not to take my advice); my introducing Bing Crosby to the young Menzies Campbell at a Hollywood party ("Ming, Bing; Bing, Ming"); Shirley Williams outlining the plans for the launch of the "SDP Party" – my reaction was "Shirley, you can’t be serious." Yet when I awaken and have the curtains drawn it is a beautiful early summer morning and all is right with the world – or at least with Rutland.

Tuesday

With a number of important fixtures for my XI coming up – notably against Mebyon Kernow, I Zingari and the Elves of Rockingham Forest – I have been eyeing the weather more closely than usual. I have consulted seaweed, pinecones and Meadowcroft’s rheumatics, but the other day decided that a more scientific approach was needed. So it is this morning that the lovely Siân Lloyd arrives at the Hall to cast her eye over my observations. Inevitably conversation turns to the end of her engagement to poor Lembit and she confesses that she could not face the prospect of being called Siân Öpik as "there would always be something hanging over me". I console her with the reply: "Never mind, my dear, you will always have Powys."

Wednesday

People complain a great deal about "the nanny state", don’t they? Well, my Nanny was always a fount of good sense and would have made a better fist of things than many cabinet ministers I have come across; certainly, she would have been a more competent Chancellor than Norman Lamont or Reginald Maudling. I suppose the point is that we do not like government nagging us about our health. With this in mind, when asked to mount a campaign in favour of better dental hygiene, I was careful to choose a public figure whom everyone loves: look out for my "Brush your teeth like Alan Beith" posters on a billboard near you soon.

Thursday

It is a fine day and I climb the tower at the Hall to survey the old demesne. My eye is caught by a figure in the far distance as it follows a zigzag course across the landscape, falling into a stream here, fighting its way through a thicket there. Eventually it nears the house and, just as it disappears into Meadowcroft’s compost heap, I recognise it as none other than the Chancellor of the Exchequer; I descend the tower to rescue him from my gardener’s ire. I offer him a cup of tea to restore his spirits and he explains the cause of his difficulties in navigation: "It’s this compass my father gave me: I think it must have worn out or something. Every time I try to go north I end up walking around in circles." I commiserate with him and set him on the lane towards the village: a few minutes later he has to be rescued from the moat.

Friday

In recent weeks, a number of our most distinguished Members have announced that they do not intend to fight their seats at the next election – I think in particular of Paul Keetch, Phil Willis and Matthew Taylor. As a result, I have been contacted by a stream of keen young activists who want to know how they can improve their chances of being selected to fight these tempting constituencies. My advice is generally to establish that you have a local connection: "Tell them," I say, "that your family comes from Cornwall; that you have always been fond of Harrogate toffee; that your mother was frightened by a Hereford bull whilst she was pregnant with you." (I fear that in certain cases this last claim is all too plausible). Some ask if they should also be familiar with the latest papers from the party’s Federal Policy Committee, but I generally reply that this will not be necessary.

Saturday

I see that Alan Johnson has been defeated in Labour’s Deputy Leadership contest by Harriet Harman, who is some sort of niece of Lord Longford. I can only regard this as something of a shame as Johnson has always struck me as the best sort of postman – the sort of fellow who whistles in the street, always closes your gate and has the sense to leave parcels behind the buddleia if you happen to be out. Harman is best known for walking out of an interview on the Women’s Hour programme when it became too taxing, but at least she was following the first piece of advice I give young candidates when it comes to dealing with the broadcast media: Always know where the exit is.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10.

"Just sign here, Quentin"

Today's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News. I was afraid that by the time it appeared someone would have broken ranks and accepted a ministerial post under Brown.

Fortunately for me and for the party, it did not happen. But I share Norfolk Blogger's doubts about even those advisory posts.

Age matters

I chose quite a week to go on holiday. Reading the papers, I half expected to find a telephone message from Gordon Brown waiting for me at home. Would I like a peerage and did I fancy taking over from Ben Bradshaw as Minister for Fish?

The way our parliamentarians resisted Brown's overtures speaks volumes for the Liberal Democrats' discipline and common purpose. It is the Conservatives who have proved flaky at the edges with the defection of Quentin Davies.

Like most defections, it will be a nine days' wonder. But Davies's resignation letter is important because it was almost certainly written by Brown's spin doctors. ("Just sign here, Quentin") and shows how Labour will attack now David Cameron:

Under your leadership the Conservative Party appears to me to have ceased collectively to believe in anything, or to stand for anything.

It has no bedrock. It exists on shifting sands. A sense of mission has been replaced by a PR agenda.Although you have many positive qualities you have three, superficiality, unreliability and an apparent lack of any clear convictions, which in my view ought to exclude you from the position of national leadership to which you aspire.

This line of attack has one clear merit: the claims it makes are patently true."Superficiality, unreliability and an apparent lack of any clear convictions" brings us naturally to Harriet Harman. Her tactic of winning John Cruddas's second preferences by implying she shared his views on Iraq, then disowning them the day she was elected, shocks even in this cynical age.

But she does have previous: the champion of women's rights who cut benefits for single mothers; the former star of the National Council for Civil Liberties who now backs identity cards.

In this naughty world Menzies Campbell's integrity shines like a good deed. I was pleased he tackled the issue of his age: "Politics would benefit from more people with experience. If more experienced politicians had taken the decisions, we might not be mired in the conflict that we see in Iraq today."

I never trusted the idea of "putting the zing into Ming": better to let him be what he is. Which would not be a bad idea for Harriet Harman or Quentin Davies either.

Identity cards: All your fears were justified

Harriet Harman has rightly angered a lot of people by suggesting that the National Identity Register could be used to draw up the electoral roll. Here is Phil Booth from No2ID.net quoted in the Guardian:

"To take an identity register which you've said is purely for a very specific set of purposes, and then to turn it into this general purpose register that you use for everything, is a complete and utter betrayal of everything they've said in parliament."

But her idea should not come as a surprise if you read this blog. On 22 June last year I described an exchange in the Commons chamber:

When Clive Betts suggested that one way to ensure the electoral register is accurate would be to link it with the national identity database there were groans from the other side. At which she brightly suggested: "That's the best argument in favour of a national identity card."

In case you have forgotten, Harman was legal officer for the National Council for Civil Liberties (the organisation now called Liberty) between 1978 and 1982.

I often wonder how people who change their beliefs so fundamentally justify it to themselves. What goes on inside their heads? Don't we all try to construct a narrative that makes are decisions principled and consistent?

Another government minister has been busy going back on past undertakings. The BBC reports:

Sharper CCTV images are needed so shots of suspected criminals can be matched to the proposed identity card database, a Home Office minister has said.

Baroness Scotland told the Lords poor quality CCTV currently runs the risk of innocent people being wrongly arrested.

"Digital pictures ... will enable us, particularly when ID cards come in, to identify those who are responsible for very serious crime," she added.