What do we Lib Dems offer the voters Zack Polanski has won over?

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It's easy for a Liberal Democrat with a good memory to find Zack Polanski irritating. His story that he stood for his local council as Lib Dem because he cared about proportional representation, but then joined the Greens because he found he agreed with them more, doesn't square with what we recall of him.

He didn't just stand for his borough council, he also stood for the London Assembly and was dead keen to be our candidate in the 2016 Richmond Park by-election. His complaints when he wasn't selected filled Lib Dem social media for ages afterwards.

In fairness to him, my best researches have found no trace of any democratic process behind that selection: Sarah Olney seems to have been simply announced as the candidate. If this was the case, it was understandable, as the party had found itself without a single woman MP after the carnage of the previous year's general election.

There was little sign of Polanski the eco-populist in those days. Here he is writing on Lib Dem Voice right after that election:

I want a leader who is proud of our Government record, who doesn't have blinkers about where we failed to communicate effectively with the electorate whilst still being immensely proud of what Nick and our colleagues achieved in office.

Well, we can all change our minds – in fact, politics would be better if more people changed their minds – but maybe the thread of continuity between old Zack and new Zack is that both are very good at judging what his audience wants to hear.

Again courtesy of Lib Dem Voice, you can also watch Polanski's performance at the conference rally from 2015 – his speech starts at 24:55 and then, you've been warned, there's music.

The media's attempted gotchas against Polanski – his council tax, his failure to vote and, most worrying if justified, his claimed professional qualifications – don't seem to have deterred voters, but they do suggest a rather disorganised individual.

What they should spend more time asking Polanski, of course, is where the substantial policies to support his rhetoric are and why he so rarely talks about the environment.

But however irritated we Lib Dems feel, a significant section of the electorate feels sympathy with his views. And they are voters – young, urban and radical, but without ancestral loyalty to Labour – that a Liberal party should be winning over.

Writing in the London Review of Books, James Butler gives a kinder account of Polanski's progress, suggesting that his journey is typical of that also taken by many of his new voters:

Polanski’s political journey – he started out as a Liberal Democrat – is sometimes framed as opportunism but in fact reflects the often radicalising economic experience of millennials now approaching middle age. 

Many of the instinctive policy positions of Green supporters are the common sense of a decade ago: opposition to austerity, borrowing for infrastructure, rent control and social housebuilding. 

But the environment has changed: borrowing is harder, energy supply unstable, inflation a drag, wages miserable; the world is less stable, chaos and conflict are inevitable. There is an opportunity to frame a coherent Green politics in response to this moment – an egalitarian politics of public affluence and energy sovereignty – but it cannot be a cargo-cult Corbynism.

What do we Lib Dems have to say to people radicalised by their economic experience over the last 10 or 20 years? Providing a good answer to that question will be key if we are again to be able to win seats outside the affluent South of England.

Zack Polanski and Alistair Darling: Two soft rides from the Guardian

I'm late to the party on last week's Guardian interview with Zach Polanski, but I've still decided to come.

Reading it today, I find it's not the first time the Guardian has allowed the politician to present a carefully edited version of his past without challenge.

Zoe Williams¹ tells us that Polanksi:

started by joining the Lib Dems, and standing as a councillor in north London in 2016. “That was for one very clear reason,” he says. “Proportional representation – it’s always been really important to me.” He joined the Greens the following year...

But Polanski didn't stand in a London borough election: he stood for the Greater London Assembly. And, a prominent figure on social media, he clearly had higher ambitions with the Liberal Democrats. 

Some say he had his eye on the by-election in Richmond Park, and made up his mind to leave the Lib Dems once the local party decided to stick with Sarah Olney as their candidate.

And then there was that notorious article where he told a Sun journalist he could make her breasts bigger by using hypnosis.²

Reading it now, it looks like a puff piece for his business rather than a hatchet job. Yet Williams defends it on the grounds that "he was only just 30".

But this is not the first such interview I've seen in the Guardian. Here's Decca Aitkenhead profiling the late Alistair Darling back in 2008:

Studying law at Aberdeen, he stood for election in the student union, but not for a party. "I was just quite interested in getting things done." His manifesto favoured "strictly bread-and-butter issues, things like food prices in the student refectory". When he joined the Labour party in 1977, he never expected to be more than a member.

The truth was rather different and will surprise anyone who remembers Darling in days as Gordon Brown's chancellor.

Here's George Galloway remembering a meeting with Darling in 1973:

When I first met him 35 years ago Darling was pressing Trotskyite tracts on bewildered railwaymen at Waverley Station in Edinburgh. He was a supporter of the International Marxist Group, whose publication was entitled the Black Dwarf.

And joining Labour didn't curb his militant tendencies:

Later ... he became the treasurer of what was always termed the rebel Lothian Regional Council. Faced with swinging government spending cuts which would have decimated the council services or electorally ruinous increases in the rates, Alistair came up with a creative wheeze.

The council, he said, should refuse to set a rate or even agree a budget at all, plunging the local authority into illegality and a vortex of creative accounting leading to bankruptcy.

Surprisingly, this strategy had some celebrated friends. There was "Red Ted" Knight, the leader of Lambeth council, in London, and Red Ken Livingstone newly elected leader of Greater London Council. Red Ally and his friends around the Black Dwarf were for a time a colourful part of the Scottish left.

The late Ron Brown, Red Ronnie as he was known, was Alistair's bosom buddy. He was thrown out of Parliament for placing a placard saying hands off Lothian Region on Mrs Thatcher's despatch box while she was addressing the House. And Darling loved it at the time.

The former Scottish trade union leader Bill Speirs and I were dispatched by the Scottish Labour Party to try and talk Alistair Darling down from the ledge of this kamikaze strategy, pointing out that thousands of workers from home helps to headteachers would lose their jobs as a result and that the council leaders - including him - would be sequestrated, bankrupted and possibly incarcerated. How different things might have been.

Anyway, I well remember Red Ally's denunciation of myself as a "reformist", then just about the unkindest cut I could have imagined.

A reader asks: So what's the moral of all this?

Liberal England replies: I suppose it's that you shouldn't believe everything you read in the Guardian.

The reader persists: That a bit obvious, isn't it?

Liberal England admits: I suppose it is. To be honest, I just wanted to repeat that George Galloway story one last time. Oh, and to show that I've found how to do the numbers for footnotes in superscript.³

Notes

1. Nevertheless, I won't hear a word against Zoe Williams: in my press officer days she was always a pleasure to deal with. Polly Toynbee, by contrast, once made me miss my train.
2. I'm not scandalised by that Sun article, it's just that it reminds me of when P.G. Wodehouse's Sir Roderick Spode, leader of the Black Shorts, turns out to be a designer of ladies' underwear. And Polanski's suggested strategy of concentrating on winning an urban, Corbynite vote will appeal to many Green members.
3. See?

59 Labour MPs support Sarah Olney's electoral reform bill

Today the Commons voted to give Sarah Olney leave to introduce her 10-minute rule bill to bring in "a system of proportional representation for parliamentary elections and for local government elections in England". The vote was won with a majority of two - 138 to 136

The bill is unlikely to proceed further, as it does nor have government support. But the vote was still significant, because 59 Labour MPs voted in support of Sarah's bill. Sarah is the Liberal Democrat MP for Richmond Park.

Introducing her bill, she said:

We are also seeing record levels of disillusionment with the political process, with citizens becoming increasingly disengaged. This is reflected in the fact that turnout in the 2024 general election was the second lowest since 1918 at just under 60 per cent. 

Over 40 per cent of registered voters in the UK thought so little of the political process they did not think it worth expressing a preference for one candidate over another.

I can see James MacCleary now the Rain has Gone: Lord Bonkers' foreword to the new Liberator Songbook

Journalists have been clutching their pearls for several days, but only now are Liberal Democrats gathering for the Conference Glee Club.

The event is nothing without a Liberator Songbook, and - or so the old brute tells me - a Liberator Songbook is nothing without a foreword by Lord Bonkers.

So here's the one he's written for this year's edition.

Bonkers Hall

Rutland

Tel. Rutland 7

Planning the Bonkers Hall International Arts Festival takes up much of my time over the summer, falling as it does just before the Liberal Democrat autumn conference. (For myself, I tend to fall at or immediately after the conference.)

This year’s programme featured the Elves of Rockingham Forest, who offered ‘An Evening of Aeolian Harmonies (no money returned)’, while the Well-Behaved Orphans put on their traditional gymnastic display. (Only three got over the wall this time.)

Earl Russell’s Big Band made a welcome return after many years, and the Sisters from the Convent of Our Lady of the Ballot Box offered their tribute to the Sex Pistols.

No, you don’t mess with those nuns. I shan’t forget the Mother Superior warning Violent Bonham Carter, the gender-fluid London crime boss of the Sixties, that the convent was “her manor” and that she would “give a slap to anyone who got lairy”. You have to admit she’s got more go than the Revd Hughes.

And I found many talents within the greatly enlarged Lib Dem parliamentary party. Bobby Dean, for instance, enjoyed a successful career singing ballads (rather bland ballads, if I am honest) for white American teenagers until the Beatles changed everything. When I first met Roz Savage, by contrast, she was a member of an all-girl punk group.

Some songs, of course, were written about our MPs. ‘Olney the Lonely’ was occasioned by the writer’s sympathy for Sarah when she found herself joining such a small Commons group after winning her by-election. Johnny Nash, I believe, penned ‘I can see James MacCleary now the Rain has Gone’ after a showery canvassing session in Newhaven.

But enough from me. Enjoy the Glee Club and may you stay forever Claire Young.

Bonkers

Zac Goldsmith gets a ban after speeding four times, but at least he keeps his trousers

 LBC reports:

Former environment minister Zac Goldsmith has been banned from driving after being caught speeding four times in London in less than four months.

Lord Goldsmith pleaded guilty the four incidents at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Thursday. The driving offences took place between late April and early August last year. He was banned until mid-March.

Zac Goldsmith and cars? That rings a bell.

Sure enough, I can bring you this story from 2016:

Zac Goldsmith limped into the last hustings of the Richmond Park by-election an hour late after being struck by his own car. 

The former London mayoral candidate was not badly hurt but his trousers were "shredded" when a volunteer driving his car clipped him while they were out canvassing. 

The collision in New Malden happened as he was due on stage at the Richmond Society’s hustings - his last chance to debate publicly with his by-election rival, Liberal Democrat Sarah Olney. 

Arriving an hour late after going home to change, he said he was "so sorry" for missing the start of such an "extraordinarily important event".

What it is to have been blogging a long and have a good memory for political trivia!

Thames Water and the Liberal history of the Ham Lands

Over to the Save Ham Lands and River site:

Thames Water has outlined a scheme that would involve digging a tunnel to convey treated sewage from Mogden Sewage Works, via Twickenham, in a line that will lie under Ham Lands to the discharge location on the Surrey side of the River in the North Kingston/Ham part of Ham Lands and associated local nature conservation area.

Up to six construction sites each requiring an area of size of half a football pitch will be required for tunnel shafts. A total area of 3 to 4 acres.

And here is Sarah Olney, the Liberal Democrat MP for Richmond and North Kingston, taking up the cause in Westminster Hall this week:

I congratulate my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for securing this extremely important debate. She mentioned Ham Lands, which is in my constituency of Richmond Park. 

It is a local nature reserve that the local community has spent decades trying to protect. It has a unique ecology; it is home to many rare plants, lichen and fungi. 

Yet incredibly Thames Water proposes to build up to six major construction sites on Ham Lands, each one half the size of a football pitch. The plans include the permanent - I emphasise permanent - destruction of five acres of vital wildlife habitat. In total, 24,000 people have signed a petition against the scheme. 

Does she agree that the community has made its views very clear and that the Government must now listen?

And Munira Wilson, who had called the debate on water resources proposals for Teddington, did agree.

Ham Lands is a nature reserve in Richmond upon Thames, between the river and the villages of Ham and Petersham.

Early in the 20th century there were gravel pits there. These were worked out by the time of the second world war and they were later used as a dump for rubble from London's bombsites.

This is a reminder that what are dismissed as brownfield sites can often be more valuable for conservation and recreation than your average piece of farmland. The rubble that came to the Ham Lands, for instance, brought with it soils and seeds from across London, leading to a particularly rich local flora.

I know a bit about the Ham Lands because I lived in Richmond for a while in the early 1980s, by which time they had become a political issue in the borough.

At some point the council had bought land there with the intention of using it for housing. Later, as the Ham Lands came to be valued as a local amenity, parts were sold off to private developers.

By 1983 there was a vocal campaign to protect the Ham Lands from further development. This was achieved when the Liberal-SDP Alliance took control of the council in the autumn of 1983.

I remember Alan Watson, the Liberal PPC for Richmond and a man not without a sense of his own importance, arriving at a meeting of the constituency party to find the new council leader, David Williams, passing round photographs of Ham Lands wildlife so we could all see what had been saved.

Watson had to wait until we'd all finished admiring them before he could tell us how he was going to be in the Alliance cabinet after the next general election.

Lib Dems accuse Tories of wanting rail strike to keep activists away from by-election

The Liberal Democrats transport spokesperson Sarah Olney has written to transport secretary Grant Shapps accusing the government of sitting on its hands over the proposed rail strikes. 

This, the letter says, is because the government hopes the strikes will keep Lib Dem activists away from the Tiverton and Honiton by-election.

The Independent report quotes some of letter:

"It is becoming clearer by the day why you have chosen to let these strikes go ahead," Ms Olney said in a letter to the transport secretary. 

"This is part of a cynical and desperate political game by the Conservative party to help Boris Johnson win next week’s crucial by-elections, despite the devastating blow no rail services will have on tourism in areas such as the South West." 

She added that the strike will "result in volunteers not being able to attend the by-election in Devon", branding it "a new low for the Conservative party".

The strikes have been called by the rail unions for 21, 23 and 25 June - 23 June is polling day in the by-election.

I suppose the Tories can say in their defence that they are sitting on their hands over every problem Britain faces, but it makes you think.

Jo Swinson 1 John Humphrys 0

Liberal Democrats were not the only people to enjoy it this morning when Jo Swinson neatly turned the tables on John Humphrys.

His tone of wounder impatience in reply did him no favours.

As I blogged last year:

One of the many problems with Today is John Humphrys. Too often his interviewing his based on his prejudices, which became tedious years ago. 

It is tempting to attribute this to his age, but I suspect he has always been like that. So let's just say that the team of presenters needs to be refreshed and Humphrys is the first candidate to stand down.

Here his failure to grasp that undervaluing of women when it comes to pay might be part of a wider problem in how they are treated did him no favours either.

Part of the trouble is that Westminster is run as though it were occupied by hundreds of small businesses, with each MP employs a small handful of people.

Sarah Olney has spoken about how hard it was to put an office together when she won her by-election and then make them all its staff redundant when she lost at the general election.

People who work for MPs at Westminster should be employed by the House authorities. They could make sure they have in place the sort of policies against harassment and bullying that the rest of us have with for years.

Does Sarah Olney's departure mean the Lib Dems expect an early election?

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Yesterday the Richmond & Twickenham Times quoted Sarah Olney's explanation of her resignation as Vince Cable's chief of staff after only eight weeks:

"Commuting from the constituency to Westminster every morning, and talking to so many local people on that daily journey, convinced me there remains much to do in the constituency. Having lost by just 45 votes at the last election, I believe I can win the seat back and I am determined to fight for local people against a Conservative Brexit and Heathrow expansion. 

"I have only done the job for a short period but now Vince has so successfully established himself as leader of the party with a great team around him in his office and in Liberal Democrat HQ, I feel able to step aside."

Maybe that is spin to cover up an appointment that was not working out on one side or the other.

But it may be that it is true. In which case it means the Lib Dems want someone working full time in what is their second most promising target. (Only North East Fife has a smaller majority to overturn than the 45 votes Sarah lost by in June.)

And if they wants that, it suggests the Lib Dems think an early general election is a serious possibility.

Later. Guido Fawkes reminds us that Sarah has not yet been reselected as candiate for Richmond Park

Greens stand down in Richmond and Twickenham

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Those of us who wondered what the Lib Dem had received for standing down in Brighton Pavilion have received an answer.

The Richmond and Twickenham Times has announced that the Greens will not be fielding candidates in either Richmond Park or Twickenham.

The former is being defended by Sarah Olney after her victory in last year's by-election. In the latter Vince Cable is trying to regain the seat he held between 1997 and 2015.

The paper quotes Richard Bennett, Richmond and Twickenham Green Party co-chair:

"We are proud to be at the vanguard of a growing movement to create a new kind of politics. Progressive parties must work together to put country before party."

Six of the Best 649

"Richmond Park must be an inspiration for those wanting an open, tolerant Britain – and we must shout loud enough to wake the government from its sleepwalk towards a trade war," says Sarah Olney.

"Surviving and overcoming the Trump era will require that citizens recommit with seriousness to those values, and find ways to keep them alive in day-to-day life." Martin O'Neill on how we can fight off the threat Donald Trump.poses to to civil liberties and other core democratic values.

Rosalind Adams investigates how America’s largest psychiatric chain turns patients into profits.

Should we use "Dark Ages" to describe a period in our history? Howard Williams debates the question while visiting Tintagel.

Interviewed in 2012, Terry Jones talks about life inside Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Mimi Matthews shows that cats are responsible for all of English literature.

Why I am a sceptic about the idea of a Progressive Alliance

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Last night, in a Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council by-election, the Conservatives held Trench ward with an increased majority.

Not a big surprise, you may think. But there was more to it than that.

Because both the Liberal Democrats and the Greens had stood down to give Labour a clear run.

It is always unwise to read too much into a single local contest, but the outcome here should remind us of an important lesson.

Parties cannot deliver their voters en bloc to another party.

And that is why I am a sceptic when it comes to the idea of a "progressive alliance" against the Tories.

Think of the Richmond Park by-election.

Would it have helped Sarah Olney if Labour had declined to field a candidate? I doubt it very much.

Think of the way that we hung the support that Zac Goldsmith had received from Ukip around his neck.

If Sarah had been endorsed by Labour she would have been "Jeremy Corbyn's candidate" on every Tory leaflet in Richmond Park.

That would have made it less, not more, likely that she would have won.

The Green Party did stand down in Richmond, which may have helped Sarah. Only people who were already going to vote Tory would have been discomfited by that.

But that is because the Greens do not matter than much at present. If they did come to be more significant in the minds of the voters, then deals with them would become more problematic,

True, they are not laden with decades of embarrassing baggage the way Corbyn and McDonnell are,
but they would then put off potential Lib Dem voters as well as attract them.

We should also ask what the Greens are after in return for standing down in seats like Richmond. I suspect it is because they are after a clear run in their own most promising seats.

As these are generally ones that we Liberal Democrats held as recently as 2010 - Bristol West, Norwich South - I am wary of giving them what they want.

(If you want a alternative view of a Lib Dem - Green alliance, read Clifford Fleming on the Social Liberal Forum site.)

Let's end by returning to the central point: parties cannot deliver their voters en bloc to another party.

The corollary of this is that when voters have made up their mind to throw out the Tories, they are quite capable of organising themselves to do it.

Think of 1997, when the operation was carried out with ruthless efficiency.

Sometimes that was to the detriment of us Liberal Democrats. In several of our target seats (St Albans, Hastings and Rye, Bristol West again) Labour came from third place to beat the Tories.

Yes, some of our gains because Labour did not try to hard in those constituencies, but that is because informal pacts like those are more likely to bear fruit that any grand, publicly announced Progressive Alliance.

Zac Goldsmith is hit by his own car and loses his trousers

From the Evening Standard today:

Zac Goldsmith limped into the last hustings of the Richmond Park by-election an hour late after being struck by his own car. 

The former London mayoral candidate was not badly hurt but his trousers were “shredded” when a volunteer driving his car clipped him while they were out canvassing. 

The collision in New Malden happened as he was due on stage at the Richmond Society’s hustings - his last chance to debate publicly with his by-election rival, Liberal Democrat Sarah Olney. 

Arriving an hour late after going home to change, he said he was “so sorry” for missing the start of such an “extraordinarily important event”.

Like Tim Hall, I am reminded of Monty Python and the Upper Class Twit of the Year Show.

"And Oliver has run himself over. What a great twit!"

Sarah Olney exposes the nonsense of Zac Goldsmith's resignation

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Good stuff from Sarah Olney, the Liberal Democrat candidate in this week's Richmond Park by-election:

"Zac Goldsmith's idea that this was going to be a referendum about Heathrow has turned out to be nonsense because there is no pro-Heathrow candidate standing. 

"Actually, what people really want to talk about is Brexit." 

Mrs Olney called his decision to resign "ludicrous". 

"He doesn't need a further mandate to oppose Heathrow," she said. "He already had that twice over."

These wise words come from the Press Association, via the Daily Mail.