My Welsh Assembly Campaign - Part One - The Background

While browsing the 'Liberal Democrat' newspaper this summer, an advert leaped out at me – candidates wanted for the Welsh Assembly elections in May 2011. One word came into my head – Ceredigion. My campaign had begun.

I spent some happy years as a student at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and have frequently gone back to the area. Ceredigion is a beautiful part of the country and is well recommended for holiday breaks – whether you like walking or cycling, driving around the area or just lazing on the beach. It is also an excellent place to study.

‘I’m applying to be a Lib Dem candidate for the Welsh Assembly’, I told my wife.
‘How much money do they get?’ she replied – which I guess most wives would ask if one is contemplating a career move. Having looked it up and satisfied her that we would not go broke, I put my application together.

There was a long road ahead, of course, but there was nothing to lose by trying. Having now wound down from the general election campaign I had itchy feet to get moving again.

Welsh affairs are shamefully ignored by the London media so a bit of background. The National Assembly for Wales opened for business in 1999 and has 60 Assembly Members (AMs) and, like the Scottish Parliament, is elected every four years by a form of proportional representation (PR).

Why PR? Because otherwise there might be no Conservatives at all – there were no Tory MPs in Scotland or Wales after 1997 and even now they only have one in Scotland. (PR to benefit the Tories? Oh, the irony!)

Since 2007 Wales has been ruled by a Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition. The First Minister is Carwyn Jones (Labour) who answers every question with ‘it’s the UK government’s fault’. The leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats is Kirsty Williams who is a very impressive campaigner and constantly has the First Minister on the run during questions. And the proceedings of the Welsh Assembly are far more polite and professional than the House of Commons (which isn’t difficult).

Ceredigion has a Liberal Democrat MP (Mark Williams) who had a tremendous result at this year’s election increasing his majority from over 200 to just over 8,000. Ceredigion’s current AM is from Plaid Cymru.

I obtained and completed the application form and off it went. Two questions came to mind for which I would need answers – one, why should Ceredigion’s voters elect an Englishman to represent them and, two, how could I lead a campaign while living elsewhere? (My answers in the next chapter).

Initially I also applied for the regional list of Mid and West Wales (these are the ‘top-up’ AMs to ensure a proportional balance in the Assembly) but decided to withdraw as it became impractical and I wanted to concentrate on Ceredigion.

The regional list selections were all carried out first and meanwhile I kept in touch with events and what was happening in Ceredigion.

Finally I was delighted to get the invitation to the hustings. I was on my way.

Millbank Tower - The Day After

I am sitting here at my desk on the 11th floor of Millbank Tower where I work each day – except yesterday when, in my absence, my workplace became the subject of headline news.

I refer of course to yesterday's riots following the student demonstration against tuition fees in the Millbank concourse where there are two main buildings. One is Millbank Tower, which is 32 floors high. Next door is 30 Millbank which is six or seven floors and is where the students got on the roof. This building suffered the most damage.

Although not at work, I managed to keep in touch with my colleagues. There is an emergency evacuation procedure for fires and bombs but we don’t have one for riots! It was all a scary experience apparently, especially for the reception staff on the ground floor, and took a while for the office to be closed down and everyone to be evacuated down the stairs at the back of the building.

There were continuous alarms and regular security alerts and, when you halfway up the building, you can’t see too clearly what is happening on the ground floor. People were phoning home to ask people to watch on BBC News or getting news by contacting friends on Facebook.

While everyone is cleaning up downstairs, a few thoughts occurred to me.

Firstly I had kept in touch with the organisation of the demo as I was intending to participate. (In the end, illness prevented me from going anywhere).

But, during the preparations, never once did it say the march would go near Millbank Tower, which is ten minutes walk along the Thames from Parliament. The focus was to be Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square. So did someone, as some stage, say, come on chaps let’s go down the road to storm Millbank Tower, and everyone went along on a whim?

We all knew that the demonstration was scheduled, but up the road in Westminster, not outside our front door. The shock of my work colleagues, and those in other offices, testifies that this was a completely unexpected turn of events. It is difficult for us to blame the police who must have been as surprised as anyone.

Secondly, the anger of the students is directed at the Liberal Democrats – in my view, understandably. So why then attack the HQ of the Conservative party? Is it because no-one knew how to get Cowley Street?

Tories are no friends of students, less still of those on lower incomes. They are there to protect the rich and a pure Tory government would have put fees up higher and higher to keep the poor kids out and make it easier for rich kids to get in. As the Tories were behaving entirely in character, why attack them?

Thirdly, the riots took the attention away from the main event – a well organised, largely attended, mostly peaceful demonstration. All the TV pictures were of the Millbank area.

One could argue that had the demo been entirely peaceful, it would have been ignored by the media and politicians – at least this way it gets noticed. But on the other hand it does the cause far more harm than good. But I was pleased to see Aaron Porter of the NUS condemn the trouble so quickly.

I am informed that it was a spontaneous riot when demonstrators, walking on their way home, suddenly realised that they were walking past the Tory headquarters. Another possibility is that the demonstration was hijacked by those with other motives – to discredit the students and the intentions of the protest.

As a Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate, I signed the pledge to oppose tuition fees – and I intend to continue to campaign against tuition fees. I think we have let the students down and should admit to it (see my earlier entry). This could be a setback but we must continue and lobby all our MPs to vote against any fees increase.

For now, though, it’s back to work. We are open for business as usual. Life goes on.

Swale Council elections 2011 update

It’s now six months to go until the 2011 ‘all-out’ Swale council elections – the most important local elections for many years.

I have suggested to my colleagues that we put together our manifesto. We should ask ourselves – if the Liberal Democrats won 24 council seats (!) and took control of Swale council, what would we do? I would like us to produce a short document setting out our ideas. (Ideally this document would go through every door in Swale but of course that won’t happen).

Naturally we won’t win 24 seats – it’s proving difficult to get 24 candidates – but a document of ideas will show we have the energy and enthusiasm to get our message across.

The idea of a manifesto is shamelessly stolen from Swale UKIP (link below) who have come up with the interesting proposal of a devolution of power to Sittingbourne, Sheppey and Faversham and greater influence for parish councils. This division of power down to another level is, dare I say it, quite liberal, and I think is one we can support. My main reservation is that Swale already has a large number of committees (29! For only 47 councillors!) and I hope this would not mean three planning committees, three standards etc unless we offloaded some of those in existence.

Sittingbourne and Sheppey Labour meanwhile are dozing along, happily celebrating Lib Dem setbacks, yet to wake up to the fact that it is the Tories who are in control. Labour would be very happy if they wiped us out – even if it meant sitting in opposition surrounded by Tories for another four years.

Labour need to win 14 seats to control the council. They will make some gains but I don't think they will make enough. If we were to work together, then we might pick off enough Conservative seats between us to deny the Tories a majority and set up a Lab-Lib Dem administration. Unfortunately that won’t happen.

I expect the Conservatives will repeat their ‘no campaigning’ policy which has been so successful in recent years. And, let’s face it, with Labour unwilling and the rest of us unable to provide strong opposition then Conservative control for many years looks assured – and that is bad news for Swale.

But let us not be downhearted. We few, we happy few, (we very few) will give it our best shot. After all, six months is a long time in politics.

STOP PRESS: As I was typing this, I am happy to report that I have been invited to Ceredigion to a Hustings in a few weeks to find a Liberal Democrat candidate for the Welsh Assembly elections. I am now busy preparing and am very much looking forward to my visit.

Out with the old. In with the new.

(An edited version of the letter below has been sent to the magazine, Total Politics).

One aspect of the Liberal Democrats in recent months which deserves a mention is how the party membership has transformed to be better able to face its future challenges. It is out with the old and in with the new.

Some Lib Dem members became deserters. They lacked the stomach for power, responsibility and unpopularity and, instead of fighting for the party’s values locally and nationally, decided it was easier to head for the hills.

Some Lib Dem members became defectors, mostly to Labour. Obviously these people were never Liberal Democrats in the first place, have been wasting our time and resources, and we are better off saying to them good luck and good riddance.

But these weaklings and cowards have been more than replaced by new and welcome members, attracted by the fact that the Liberal Democrats are now a party which is serious about its politics and is prepared to form working relationships with other parties – as in Scotland, Wales and various councils and now the UK – in order to work together to solve the various problems we face.

The Liberal Democrats are still its own distinct party, of course, and will campaign for its own policies – and the best way to get more of these policies in place is to get more votes, more councillors and more MPs. Running away like a spoilt child will not help towards this.

No longer the party of permanent opposition, the Liberal Democrats have displayed the ability now to get policies in place and make a difference.

The decline in public support is more serious, but with welcome new and strengthened membership and the chance of making changes based on fairness, the future of the party looks good to face the challenges of the years ahead.

Report: South East Liberal Democrats Regional Conference - Eastbourne

On Saturday I found myself in Eastbourne at the South East Lib Dems Regional Conference. In the recent election campaign, this was our main target seat in the south east – I received numerous emails saying ‘never mind your constituency, come and help out in Eastbourne’ or words to that effect – but the campaign was a success and now Eastbourne joins Lewes next door with a Lib Dem MP.

The conference was sold out weeks in advance and took place in a school a few miles from Eastbourne – lots of signs saying ‘always walk on the left’ did give some cause for comment.

After a drive where the sat nav took me round several motorways, I was in the main hall in time for the opening address where the new MP, Stephen Lloyd, welcomed us all and told us how he is settling in.

He made a good point that amongst the Tories there was a group of 30 or so who could fit John Major's description of the ’loony’ element. This is a group on the extreme right, look-after-the-rich, hate-the-poor, hate-foreigners, privatise-the-NHS, abolish-all-benefits etc – you get the picture. If the Tories had won the election with a small majority, this group would have controlled the agenda, like when John Major was given a hard time. Instead, people are saying thank god the Lib Dems are there to keep these guys on the fringes (for now!)

Chris Fox, the Chief Executive, took over, pointing out the difficulties we now face (not least the loss of £2m state grant) and how we could face the future. Having received numerous emails from him, it was good to see him in person and learn more about the party's approach.

At which stage, I sneaked off to the first training session, that of the new website to be launched soon. Our local party doesn’t use the web site very well and I am keen to get it going, as well as Facebook, Twitter etc to build up a dialogue and communications.

One ploughman's lunch later, I was back in the main centre to see Vince Cable – the hall was packed for this session. I had been concerned about Vince recently, as on television, such as Question Time, he had given me the impression of not enjoying government very much. However here he fully returned to form – putting in a bullish performance and rallying the party well. On business policy and the banks I felt he was spot on. But I still disagreed with the tuition fees decision, although he made an admirable defence which won some people over.

Back to training to hear about the new ‘Winning Teams’ initiative – an idea to encourage every local party (not just those in target seats) with training and mentoring to develop further. I got some ideas to take to our next executive meeting.

Then our deputy leader, Simon Hughes, arrived and spoke optimistically for the future. I've a lot of time for Simon and he too spoke well and raised spirits. He also made a very valid point - that we can't keep blaming Labour for the deficit - it was partly Labour's actions over the years but also the world recession and the behaviour of the banks. He praised Gordon Brown for his quick actions at the time of the banking crisis.

This is a fair argument, and I have said how I would like to co-operate further with the local Labour party to try to get the Tories out of power in the council. Unfortunately Labour have decided to concentrate all their fire on us - reading their blog you wouldn't believe the Conservatives exist - so there's not much prospects there.

There was some audience participation  – Simon asked us (1) should our MPs back Vince Cable and vote for the Browne Report, (2) should they go by the coalition agreement and abstain or (3) should they honour the pledge to the NUS and vote against the Browne report? The vote was almost exactly split three ways - which is typically Liberal! (I voted for option 3).

As well as the various events and training, there were stalls from local parties fund raising and leafleting, both the candidates for Party President gave hustings which, unfortunately, I couldn’t fit in, and Lib Dem Image was there with their merchandise.

Finally, after the debate on tuition fees, I decided to call it a day and see how the sat nav was going to take me back home. The direct route from Eastbourne up to north Kent, with hardly an A-road in sight, was an interesting experience.

Overall, an interesting day which flew by. There’s only so much you can do in one day but hopefully next year I can make it to either the spring conference in Sheffield or the main conference in Birmingham. A lot will have happened by then!

We've lost The Generation Game - but can the next contestants win?

On a day where cuts are the topic being talked about, I thought I would reflect on an issue which others have taken up – that of how the ‘baby boomers’ – those that were born in the 40s and 50s – have squandered the resources of the nation through the Thatcher-Major-Blair years – and as a result are probably the first generation to actually make life much more difficult for the next.

This first came to mind when I was reading the memoirs of John Simpson, the BBC reporter. After leaving university in the mid-60s, he married his girlfriend, purchased a house in Regents Park (Regents Park!!) and had the choice of three job offers (three!!), one of which was from the BBC which he accepted. He was only 22 years old!

Had he left university now, he would have had debts of up to £20,000, would have been very unlikely to be able to afford to buy a property – never mind anywhere in London – and as for three job offers, well, after 20 applications, you might get an interview.

In case you think this is a special example, my parents decided to buy a property in the mid-60s and decided on East Anglia as prices were reasonable and it was a nice area. Indeed they got a bungalow just outside Norwich where us kids were all to be born. I asked my Dad how many jobs did he apply for before being successful? One, he told me. So they were able to purchase a good property, near good schools, in a good area, be confident of getting a job – and they were not yet 27!

What is it like now?

- Students leave university with high debts (which are set to increase further) which could take them up to twenty years to pay off.
- Getting a job is a long and difficult process – and, as they say, there’s no such thing as job security. The days of settling down and waiting for your carriage clock are long gone.
- Getting onto the property ladder is even more difficult, forcing many to borrow beyond their means or give up the idea of buying forever.
- Pensions? Forget it – if you’re under 40 you’ll work till you drop. Unless you can afford a big chunk of savings to put aside (after you’ve spent money on all the above, that is) then you can forget about getting a pension sufficient to retire on.
- The environment is ruined – but then those over 60 are not worried as they won’t be around when the worse effects hit.
- Hospitals are falling to pieces while politicians blame each other.
- Education standards have fallen due to lack of investment and competing ideologies. Have you seen the questions on kids shows in the 1950s/60s?
- The economy goes through boom and bust cycles with regular recessions to keep us all on our toes and making long term financial planning almost impossible.

My niece is four years old. By 2030, she will have left university (if she can afford to go) and be making her way in the wide world. By 2050, she may have a family and teenage children. What sort of world will she grow into? When she looks at the state of the country in 2050 and remembers the previous generations, what will she and her contemporaries think of us?

The only plus point our parents are leaving behind is the lack of war. We won’t have the threat of invasion or have to live through a total war environment although terrorism and cyber-crime are of course now major threats.

But it’s all right to grumble – what can we do about it? How can our generation repair the mistakes of the last? This is the topic that has been written about again and again. Will we ever return to the days of a stable economy, free education for the most gifted, full employment, mass property ownership, job security, a protected environment, and secure pensions?

That is the challenge to all politicians present and future. The question is – will we meet it?

Tuition fees - a way ahead?

The Liberal Democrat blogosphere has been overheating with the anger felt at the tuition fees announcement – and quite rightly so.

During the campaign, many parliamentary candidates, including myself and all our MPs, signed a pledge to the National Union of Students not to increase tuition fees. Indeed in an earlier entry about the coalition agreement, I expressed concern that there was not enough about tuition fees – being allowed to abstain was insufficient.

Labour introduced fees and bankrupted the country, the Tories are happy to see bigger fees to make it easier for rich kids to get in, and yet Liberal Democrats will get the blame! Such is politics! But it is fair to say that our party has not done enough and we have let many of our supporters down.

Anyone who is prepared to work hard enough should be entitled to a university education. I myself had some happy years studying at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. For most people it is their first experience of living away from home, giving a feeling of independence and teaching you self-discipline and responsibility – as well as the chance to meet fellow students from around the country, develop a great social life, and study a subject you enjoy.

The year before I started university, the then Thatcher government removed the right of students to claim housing benefit and introduced the poll tax. Neither went down well. We had no fees, of course, and a modest grant which could be topped up by reasonable loans.

But if I were a student now I would certainly be having second thoughts. Having a degree, a large debt of up to £40,000 and no job – all at the age of 22 is not attractive. And of course in the subsequent years many graduates then get married, have kids and a mortgage, and face an entire livelihood on debt. And, as is often said, you can’t live on debt.

If university attendances were decided by ability rather than finance, then the best minds would develop in topics such as law, medicine and science which would be of the benefit of society as a whole. However if only those from well-off families could go to university then not only would standards decline but it would be waste of some of our best minds and, as we Lib Dems like to say, it is not fair.

So what should we do?

Firstly, I would hope as many Liberal Democrat MPs as possible vote against the government. There’s enough Lib Dems as part of the government to join the Tories (who will of course happily vote for higher fees) and get it through but at least the point would be made.

Secondly, we should recommit our party to the principle of abolishing tuition fees. We have not been able to do so because we did not win enough votes but we should indicate it remains a principle to phase them out in the medium term.

Thirdly, as many Lib Dem candidates and members as possible should publicly make it clear they stand alongside the students and join the campaign against tuition fees for the sake of our universities and education standards.

Fourthly, the party should set up a policy committee to establish how the funding could take place for this commitment so that in 2015 we can come forward with costed proposals and a timetable.

These are just some ideas, and there will no doubt be many more which will arise. But we have to hold up our hands and admit we have let young people and their families down. We must work out how we can regain that trust.