My near neighbour Toby Philpott has posted the text of Nick Clegg’s launch speech.
It’s a very very good speech but - and without compromising my neutrality (I’m so neutral that Switzerland are going to give me Honorary Citizenship) - a few things strike me.
“If the Liberal Democrats are to change the tired old pattern of British politics…”
This is a reinterpretation of Alliance rhetoric in the 1980s when the metaphor was “breaking the mould”? Mould is good because as well as meaning shape it also evokes rot and decay (from mould as in fungus). “Pattern” may be better because you can hang other adjectives on it: “tired old mould” doesn’t work.
But I wonder if it’s time to say just directly say what we really mean, i.e. ”if the Liberal Democrats are to win the votes of millions more people”.
“We will have to… take more risks than ever before.”
Huhne said that last time. How does Nick reconcile this with supporting, last year, Campbell who styled himself as the safety first candidate?
“He [Ming] led the opposition to the Iraq war.”
Ming may have led our scrutiny of the ongoing occupation but Charles Kennedy really led opposition the war, in 2003. One of the differences between Huhne and Campbell was the extent of their opposition to the occupation (”set a timetable now”).
“I am a liberal… by temperament.”
That is interesting.
Being a liberal can be considered more that a set of ideas: it’s also an attidude to life and something approaching a personality type. I suppose liberal traits are calmness, rationality, tolerance, attraction to originality and creativity, acceptance of human happiness as an inherent good, and holding value in others than ourselves.
One of Nick’s strengths, it seems to me, is his ability to add new dimemsions to old questions. He is the only Lib Dem MP you reguarly hear use the word “family”, which recognises that it is perhaps more practically important in most people’s daily lives than the individual or any social institution.
Aristotle argued in The Politics (and in rejecting Plato’s Republic) that the polis cannot exist without family units. I am seriously very pleased that Nick is nearer to Aristotle than Plato. So he should be.
“I am a liberal by choice… and by conviction.”
You cannot be both. Choice is an exercise of free selection. Conviction is a fixed or firm belief. Logically, you cannot choose to be that which you are already firmly fixed as being.
I suppose the point is evident from “I wasn’t born into a political party.” Nick, like me, didn’t inherit his party membership card from his family. But if I discern the meaning correctly what he should say is more like
“I’m a liberal by conviction and a Liberal Democrat by choice”.
That is nearer the theme of his speech (Britain is liberal but we need to make it Liberal Democrat).
“Suspicious of arbitrary power…”
We may be suspicous of power but when power is specifically arbitary (i.e. capricuous, unreasonable, or unresitrcted by law) liberals can only be actively against it not merely suspicious.
Policy details
Nick obviously decided to leave out any specific policy details but I think that is a shame. A few examples would have been made much more tangible the principles he outlined.
By way of contrast, when Bobby Kennedy announced he was seeking the Democratic nomination in ‘68 (713 words, including a tribute, at the end not the start, to the man whom he was intending to succeed) he cited six specific problems as examples of his overarching theme (which was “there is a need for change”). His specifics were withdrawl from Vietnam, the Riot Commission Report, the gold crisis, the farming crisis, starvation in Mississippi, and the high Indian suicide rate. He also found space in the speech to reference Cuba, Berlin, Laos, the Test Ban Treaty, and the result of the New Hampshire Primary.
RFK finished that speech by referring to his competitors for the nomination and said,
“The issue is not personal. It is our profound differences over where we are heading and what we want to accomplish… At stake is not simply the leadership of our party… it is our right to moral leadership of this planet.”
I would like both Chris and Nick to tell us as plainly as possible what are their profound differences over where we are heading and what we want to accomplish.
My enforced public neutrality is absolute and I will gladly comment on Chris’s speech as soon as I see a text.
October 26, 2007 at 5:09 pm |
[...] clear backing of most of both the party and media establishment was simply bizarre. He should hire Antony Hook as his personal [...]