In which Jeremy Thorpe, John Pardoe and Paul Tyler tour selected resorts of Cornwall and Devon by Hovercraft

The summer of 1974 was enlivened by Jeremy Thorpe and other Liberal MPs touring the beaches of Britain by hovercraft, in anticipation of a general election in the autumn. Harold Wilson duly called one for October.

Whether people enjoying a seaside holiday would  be in the mood to meet politicians is a point you hope the party considered first. Anyway, here is a report from the  West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser  (15 August 1974) looking forward to such a tour by Thorpe, John Pardoe and Paul Tyler. There's a mention too for Edward Sara, the Liberal candidate for Falmouth and Camborne.

In this era hovercraft were very much seen as a mode of transport of the future. There would be displays of miniature ones at top-end village fetes.

As it turned out, there's a lot to be said for the Jonathan Meades theory that in Britain the future happened briefly in 1969.

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.

"When he was wise and learned ... he was known as the Calder"

If I understand Nick Barlow's latest blog post aright, it is a story told round a campfire far into a post-apocalyptic future and inspired by Calder's Sixth Law of Politics.

This holds that:

All Liberal Democrat leadership elections are reruns of Steel vs Pardoe

Nick writes:

You know how we have those who are foolish on some days and yet wise on others? They had one such as this. He was said to be an ancient soul, who was one of the Parley-Pardies in the times before the times before, he was said to know the location of the steeper stones, whatever they may be, and that he had, in his youth, put many pieces of paper through the door of many houses, though none could enlighten me as to why that was important. When he was a fool, they laughed and called him Bonkers, an old epithet of the lands of Ukay, my uncle believed, but when he was wise and learned, they sat before him as well-behaved orphans might, and then he was known as the Calder.

Now, there was an ancient prophecy, said to have been uttered by the first Calder of the tribe, that the new leader would be chosen from just two of the Parley-Pardies and that one of would be of steel, the other of a type of uncooked bread my uncle did not know but they called a par-dough. And so, the Parley-Pardies would line up in front of the Calder, he would examine them through squinted eyes and declare for all to hear which of them were steel and which were par-dough.

I have not been so flattered since I lent my name to the chairman of the Blaxwich Chamber of Commerce who attempted to assassinate Dr Beeching in Hookland.

Nick's story also reminds me of one of my very favourite blog posts: Fred Carver's Argonauts of the incredibly specific: anthropological field notes on the Liberal Democrat animal.

For instance:

Liberal Democrats also have formative rituals, or initiation ceremonies, known as “by elections” to establish identification with the group. The by election ritual is much like the circumcision ritual of the Xhosa tribe:

"During the time of the initiation, the young men live in special huts, secluded from the rest of the tribe and especially from any females. They undergo training and endurance tests, which require great discipline. All aspects of the initiation are kept very secret."

Ed Davey and Layla Moran: It's déjà vu all over again

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Calder's Sixth Law of Politics holds that all Lib Dem leadership elections are reruns of the Liberal Party leadership contest between David Steel and John Pardoe in 1976.

As I once blogged:

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.

Not all contests have obeyed my law as clearly, but this time it is spot on. It's clear that Ed Davey is the Steel and Layla Moran is the Pardoe.

For me, Ed is being a bit too much of a Steel for his own good, but I shall not be declaring my support for either candidate until I have seen more of the campaign. I have urged the same course of action on other Lib Dem members.

In case you are curious, you can find all seven of my Laws of Politics in a recent post on this blog.

Should we publish daily totals of the number of nominations Lib Dem leadership candidates have amassed?

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What do the Liberal Democrats need from the current leadership election?

I’d say it’s, above all, a good debate about the future of the party between candidates who offer clear and contrasting visions for it. We also need to see how those candidates perform in debate and when faced with difficult questions.

Well, we have two candidates with contrasting visions, but will we have the debate? At present the party is encouraging people to nominate one of the candidates by publishing running totals every afternoon.

So, of course, the two camps are doing all they can to encourage Lib Dem members to nominate their candidate. As both are a long way past the 200 nominations they need, this seems to me unfortunate.

Because it means the campaign will open with a significant percentage of the electorate already having committed themselves. Of course people can change their minds, but committing yourself in this way makes it less likely that you will do so.

Which leaves the danger that the campaign will become more about cheering your candidate on and less about the future of the party.

That may sound too idealistic, but we need to do some hard thinking because it's by no means guaranteed that this party has a future.

But then I always seem to be disappointed by our leadership elections.

Before the last contest (which turned out to be a coronation) I wrote a post under the title Forget “the Lib Dem family”: Let’shave proper leadership elections itemising how previous contests, from John Pardoe’s wig to Tim Farron’s religion, had failed to live up to my hopes and concluding:

It looks to me as though we Lib Dems are too scared of rocking the boat to have really informative leadership elections.

Some like to talk of the “Lib Dem family,” but in my experience happy families are those that can have lively discussions, even rows, and make their peace afterwards.

We Lib Dems, by contrast, resemble an unhappy family where everyone is sat around the dining table on their best behaviour and terrified of saying the wrong thing.

Political satire 1977 style

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So there I was listening to Radio 4 Extra and an episode of The Burkiss Way which I probably heard when it was first broadcast in 1977.

When (at 09:36) this happened:

Robin Day: Well, Mr Novelty, the question I must put to you is this. Who dreamt up this whole toad idea in the first place? 

Liberal candidate: Well, it were our party's economics expert. 

Robin Day: Pardoe? 

Liberal candidate: I SAID IT WERE OUR PARTY'S ECONOMIC EXPERT.

They don't write them like that any more. It's up there with the Two Ronnies' joke about boundary changes in the Scottish Border and David Steel being upset at losing his Peebles.

That one turned up in Lord Bonkers' diary one day and I cannot promise that this one won't too.

Alistair Carmichael considers bid for Lib Dem leadership

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If Alistair Carmichael had stood for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats in 2015 I would happily have supported him

But he was too mired in an election court case brought by SNP sympathisers to consider standing.

Now comes news that he may stand this time.

Could he be our Pardoe? Or should we remember the warning of Alexander Kotov against unexpected third choices?

"Don't blame me I voted Pardoe"

From the Awkward Squad website:

Calder's Law states that every lib dem leadership election mirrors Steel vs Pardoe: a boring, centrist, reliable, safe-pair-of-hands Steel, vs an exciting, radical, a bit risky Pardoe. Nine times out of ten the Steel wins. 

This t-shirt is for those of us who mourn the tendency of our party towards centrism, and is available in black, white, grey, and tie-dye for those who don't remember the seventies because they were there, man, and really DID vote Pardoe.

Strictly speaking, it is Calder's Sixth Law of Politics, but I am immensely flattered.

I was all set to be a Moranite, but if our next leadership election is to be Swinson vs Dayey I shall vote for whichever candidate emerges as the Pardoe.

As to the T-shirt, even I am not old enough to have voted Pardoe, so I shall settle for the grey.

Calder's Sixth Law of Politics: All Lib Dem leadership elections are reruns of Steel vs Pardoe

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My suggestion that every Liberal Democrat leadership election is a rerun of the 1976 Liberal Party contest between David Steel and John Pardoe has been getting some traction recently.

The idea , as I said in that original post, is that you get a recurring pattern where one candidate (Steel) is orthodox, sensible and a little dull and the other (Pardoe) is more charismatic, more open to new ideas but less reliable in his judgement.

It is discussed by Mark Pack and Stephen Tall in their latest Never Mind the Bar Charts podcast and it also got some notice on Twitter.

I was told by one person that this theory "has become one of the bits of mental toolkit for a few of us when talking about the party".

But then I was told by another that it is "an incredibly simplistic approach".

Anyway I have decided to elevate it into Calder Sixth's Law of Politics.

So here they all are - the fifth has been firmed up since I first stated it:

1. If all parties are united in support of a measure, it will turn out to be a disaster.
2. The more power the state takes to itself, the more arbitrarily that power will be exercised.
3. When politicians do something which they think is very clever, it will eventually turn out to have been very stupid.
4. The more extreme a person's views, the more certain he or she will be that the majority of voters share them.
5. No argument that involves expressing indignation on behalf of a third party is to be trusted.
6. All Liberal Democrat leadership elections are reruns of Steel vs Pardoe

Is Jo Swinson the Steel and Layla Moran the Pardoe?

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A few years ago I floated a theory about Liberal Party and Liberal Democrat leadership elections: the are all reruns of the 1976 contest between David Steel and John Pardoe:

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.

I even tried to apply this rule to Liberal history, with Asquith being the Steel and Lloyd George the Pardoe.

Andrew Hickey, in a tweet today, kindly suggested this distinction was a more enlightening way of analysing Lib Dem internal debates than the concepts of left and right.

He also said he wouldn't compare anyone to Steel at the moment, for obvious reasons, but I am not so discerning.

So what of the forthcoming Lib Dem leadership contest?

My feeling, looking at the expected front runners  is that Jo Swinson is the Steel and Layla Moran the Pardoe.

For what it is worth, I always vote for the Pardoe and the Steel usually wins.

David Penhaligon on Desert Island Discs

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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.

John Pardoe on Desert Island Discs in 1976

As Verdi and Aslan proved popular, here is their owner's appearance on Desert Island Discs.

John Pardoe was the Liberal Party's economic spokesman when this was broadcast in April 1976. He had been MP for North Cornwall since 1966, but was to lose the seat at the 1979 general election. At the time his defeated was widely attributed to the Thorpe affair.

In those days Pardoe and David Penhaligon were my political heroes, and I remember listening to this programme when it went out.

There is a point of dermatological interest. Pardoe refers to walking the Cornish coast the previous summer on "the hottest days of the century" or something like that.

Because of the drought of 1976, it has been forgotten that the summer of 1975 was unusually hot too. It may have been even hotter when I walked that coast in 1990.

John Pardoe, Verdi and Aslan

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John Pardoe, Liberal MP for North Cornwall 1966-79, who was then unsuccessfully standing for the party's leadership, pictured with his golden Labradors, Verdi and Aslan, on Hampstead Heath in 1976.

Forget “the Lib Dem family”: Let’s have proper leadership elections

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The first Liberal Party leadership election I followed was the one between David Steel and John Pardoe in 1976.

I can recall two incidents from the campaign, the first of them being that Steel’s camp suggested Pardoe wore a wig. (Years later someone from that era told me there might have been something in it.)

The second is that the Steel-supporting Clement Freud (MP, panel-show contestant and rapist) produced a quotation from A.A. Milne to describe Pardoe’s campaigning style:

With one loud Worraworraworraworraworra he jumped at the end of the tablecloth, pulled it to the ground, wrapped himself up in it three times, rolled to the other end of the room, and, after a terrible struggle, got his head into the daylight again, and said cheerfully. "Have I won?"

Steel, incidentally, would be Rabbit, with the posse of advisers, assistants and minor Commonwealth dignitaries that used to accompany him being his equivalent of the Friends and Relations.

The point of all this is to remind my fellow Liberal Democrats that our leadership elections are not always very enlightening.

So while it would have been to see someone stand against Vince Cable last summer, there is no guarantee it would have led to the debate about our future that those keenest on a contest wanted to see.

Because I can think of two contested Lib Dem leadership elections where the debate that was ducked.
Let me first take you back to 2007 and the contest between Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne.

The most noteworthy event of the campaign was an joint appearance on BBC1’s The Politics Show on Sunday morning where a briefing from Huhne’s camp was produced by the interviewer. It was headed “Calamity Clegg” and listed instances where Clegg had endorsed cuts in public spending.
I blogged about it at the time:

Clearly, the headline "Calamity Clegg" was a huge misjudgement on someone's part - and adopting the American "flip-flop" charge was silly and vulgar - but surely we are allowed to discuss policy in a leadership campaign? 

Nick Clegg began this one by pledging to take the party out of its comfort zone, but has since failed to give us much idea of what that might involve. He can hardly complain if another candidate starts to speculate on his intentions as a result. 

And dismissing any attempt to debate policy as creating "synthetic differences ... [which] our opponents will use against us" is just silly.

As the ensuing years were to show, Nick Clegg was less wedded to high levels of public spending than the bulk of the party – just look at the cuts in local government funding the Coalition brought in if you doubt me.

This disagreement over public spending should have been at the heart of the contesnt, but there was a widespread attitude withln the party that it was poor taste of Huhne to raise it at all.

Fast forward to 2015 and Tim Farron vs Norman Lamb.

The idea that Farron’s Evangelical variety of Christianity might prove a difficulty for him as leader was in the air, but for the most part it was raised obliquely.

Lamb put a lot of emphasis on his support for the ‘right to die’ because, I suggested at the time, it was an issue where most Lib Dem members agreed him but one where Farron’s beliefs would make it hard for him to do so.

If Lamb had raised Farron’s religion more directly, I doubt his action would have been well received within the party. Certainly, when some of Lamb’s supporters engaged in what sounded like negative push-polling, it was an embarrassment to him.

The result was that Farron’s religion was not discussed and the suggestion it might prove a handicap to him as leader was never broached.

It looks to me as though we Lib Dems are too scared of rocking the boat to have really informative leadership elections.

Some like to talk of the “Lib Dem family,” but in my experience happy families are those that can have lively discussions, even rows, and make their peace afterwards.

We Lib Dems, by contrast, resemble an unhappy family where everyone is sat around the dining table on their best behaviour and terrified of saying the wrong thing.

I have decided I shall be voting for Tim Farron

Or at least I shall be if my ballot paper arrives.

I have found this a difficult decision, but have decided to follow my usual practice of voting for the Pardoe rather than the Steel (though I note that David Steel is supporting Tim too).

Are all Liberal leadership contests Steel vs Pardoe?

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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.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Pardoe's Old and Fruity

The end of another week at Bonkers Hall.

Sunday

When we Liberal Democrats do abolish the trolls on the Severn Bridge, I anticipate that many of my readers will visit that delightful part of the world. There is, however, one phenomenon that occurs there of which you should beware.

I came across it myself years ago when I visited a hostelry in a Gloucestershire village. There I was enjoying a party of Pardoe's Old and Fruity vintage scrumpy when a fellow in an anorak sat down next to me. His opening gambit was: “We came third in this ward at the by-election, but if we get the same swing at the next District elections we will move into second place in three more wards.” He then went on to describe how he divided up the delivery rounds, the problems he was having with his offset litho and… Well, by then I had fallen fast asleep.

When I awoke I opened a speculative eye and found the fellow had gone. “I am afraid you have met the Severn Bore,” said the barman.

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

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

Abolishing the trolls on the Severn Bridge

Danny Alexander in the gym

Chevening Oil PLC

The Well-Behaved Orphans' quiz

Call Clegg

The Democratic Republic of Rutland

Were Iain Duncan Smith's welfare reforms doomed from the start?

Iain Duncan Smith will face the Commons welfare and pensions committee over the problems with the introduction of his universal credit later today. Like most such occasions, it will probably prove a damp squib. The format of the meetings and the inadequacy of individual MPs' questioning mean witnesses are rarely forced into a damaging admissions.

But IDS's reform are in trouble. And, thinking about why that might be, I was reminded of an interview Vince Cable gave to a group of Liberal Democrat bloggers  in 2007.

Writing it up for my House Points column in the party newspaper, I described Vince's view of Gordon Brown:

Brown is in love with the power of the state and blind to its limitations. So schemes like tax credits begin with the best of intentions but founder on the inflexibility of bureaucracy and the complexity of people’s lives.

And maybe that is the problem with IDS too.

The universal credit is an appealing idea - John Pardoe always talked about bringing the tax and benefit systems together when he was the Liberal Party's economic spokesman in the 1970s - but maybe it too cannot cope with the inflexibility and complexity of our lives.

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".

The Liberal Democrats should accept David Cameron's offer in some form

So what happens if we don't accept David Cameron's "big, open and comprehensive" offer?

I see two options. The first is a short-lived Conservative administration and a second general election later this year.

That would be undesirable for two reasons. The first is that it would make the government - or at least make it appear - fragile at a time of great economic danger. That would be undesirable in itself and leads on to the second, more partisan, reason.

I do not think the Liberal Democrats would welcome a second election this year. We do not have the resources of the other two main parties and it would be hard to escape being blamed for the calling of the second election if we are seen no to cooperate with the government. It might also be hard to escape blame for worsening the economic situation.

This fear, incidentally, was one of the reasons for the Lib-Lab Pact in the 1970s: we were at least as frightened of a general election as Labour was.

The second option is to do a deal with Labour. The trouble is that a Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition would not command a majority in the Commons. In order to do so it would also have to include the SNP, Plaid, the Greens (well, the Green), the Alliance Party...

This would make it unwieldy and require it to keep the flakiest Nationalist happy in order to stay in power. Not an appealing prospect, but if we keep these smaller parties out of the coalition they could bring down a Lib/Lab government at any time by siding with the Tories on a confidence vote.

Nor am I convinced that Gordon Brown, or any other Labour leader, would be able to persuade the bulk of his party to campaign for PR in any referendum. It might be possible to win a referendum under such circumstances, but it would not be easy.

Which leaves us considering David Cameron's offer.

Like most Liberal Democrats, I cut my political teeth fighting the Conservatives and I share John Pardoe's view that "hatred of the Tories is the beginning of all political wisdom".

Nevertheless, Liberal Democrat councillors are happy to work with their Conservative counterparts up and down the country. We used to run Leicester with them; we still run Birmingham.

So I don't see that there can be an automatic bar on working with the Conservatives. If I believed that, come what may, Labour must always be in power, I would have joined the Labour Party.

And there is the point of consistency. As Liberal Democrats we believe in proportional representation and in fixed-term parliaments. In other words, we believe in accepting the cards dealt to us by the voters and making the best of them.

If the hand we have been dealt this time makes Lib/Con cooperation inevitable, so be it.

Some are not against cooperation in principle, but say we should insist on PR or even STV as a precondition.

If we had won 100 seats or more then we could have asked for almost anything we wanted from Labour or the Tories,.But we didn't. So we are in no position to demand PR from the Tories. (And, again, I doubt Cameron could deliver the Tory party to support PR even if did agree to it.)

All of which leads me to the view that some sort of arrangement with the Conservatives is the only possible position for the Liberal Democrats in the new Commons.

The form it should take is open to argument and negotiation, but I find it hard to see another path for the Liberal Democrats at the moment.

Unless you fear David Cameron would go back on his word and call an early general election anyway, but I don't think that would go down well with the voters so I don't believe he would take the risk.