Interview
A liberal view of life 11 June 2010 As his party gets into bed with the Tories, the Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell on principles and politics Not unlike his old friend, the late John Smith, who is fondly regarded as the best Prime Minister we never had, Ming Campbell may well be remembered as the right leader his party had but just at the wrong time. Despite being one of the best known Liberal Democrats, and certainly among the party’s most respected, Campbell is often portrayed as the man who failed to reach his potential. A man who, despite the best efforts of an apparently bossy, chain-smoking wife, was left a bystander as political events and younger men overtook him. A man out of kilter with his own ambitions and the political times. His dignified and authoritative air, his principled stance on issues such as the invasion of Iraq and a creeping curtailment of individual freedoms and liberty during 13 years of a Labour Government and his distinctive elder statesman style have all helped give his party a credibility that up until recent events was perhaps disproportionately lacking given its parliamentary representation. Yet despite being one of its best loved and long-standing assets, it seems Campbell’s contribution has never been fully rewarded. In the immediate aftermath of the General Election last month, the MP for North East Fife admits he was shocked at his party’s willingness to get into government with what seemed its least favoured bedfellow. Indeed, right up until the last minute, he was hoping for a different outcome. And like Vince Cable, even had face-to-face discussions with Gordon Brown, aiming to broker a deal of another shade. Every political bone in his body was telling him that it was to the left rather than the right that the Lib Dems should fall. However, when it came to the crunch, unlike his colleague Charles Kennedy, he remained loyal to the party leadership and voted for the coalition. “It’s no secret that I was arguing right up until the moment of the decision that we needed to explore what Labour could offer. I am part of the succession which goes back to Grimond, Steel, Jenkins, Shirley Williams, Ashdown and mirrored on the other side by Blair that the political realignment would come from the left and that there would eventually be a prospect of a non-doctrinaire, centre-left party. If Blair hadn’t been quite so successful in 1997 we might have had it but as Blair developed, and I don’t really like labels, but he became more of a Christian Democrat than a Social Democrat and his foreign policy in particular was much more interventionary than I would have liked. “If Labour had stuck to its personal freedom and individual liberty agenda and Blair had not been the architect of 42-day detention then things may have been different and Gordon neither had the time nor inclination to make much difference to that. He was stuck with Afghanistan and the tail end of Iraq but what is interesting is that in July 2007, shortly after he became PM, he made a statement to the Commons about all the constitutional change he was going to make and it just disappeared, to be fair, under the weight of the economic problems, but that agenda was all stuff like fixed-term parliaments, AV, elected House of Lords, bigger, better, wider FOI, all classic liberal stuff but either by lack of inclination or opportunity he never put it into operation. So now we have what we have. “It’s a compromise and to some extent, my judgement was made easier because I spoke to Gordon over that weekend, as he spoke to Vince Cable and others, and I am quite certain in my own mind that he was anxious to find an arrangement but I am equally certain that within his own party, and for quite legitimate reasons, there were people saying, ‘we got beat and we need to go back and think about what we are going to do for the future’ and there were others thinking already about the leadership election and others who just don’t like the Liberal Democrats and didn’t want to enter into any kind of an arrangement with us and would have been hellish difficult to deal with so in my view, Gordon acted in good faith but in the end the Tories just outbid Labour. “Did the Tories have a moral mandate? If we had a system of proportional representation then you could say they had a moral mandate but in a first-past-the-post system where it roughly divides a third, a third, a third, they didn’t but they did have a moral imperative rather than a mandate to do something urgently about the economic crisis. Labour wasn’t responsible for the world crash but they were certainly responsible for the fact that we were hit harder and will take longer to get out of it and in those circumstances, it is quite hard to argue that they had any moral mandate to do anything. Another issue was that if there was no deal with Labour possible then as far as the Tories were concerned they could have been a minority government, a confidence and supply government or there could be a fully-fledged coalition. “A minority government would have seen Cameron going to the Palace within six months and asking for a dissolution and he would have got it and almost certainly as long as they hadn’t been too draconian in the meantime, he would have been returned with a majority but with none of the checks and balances offered by a coalition, and the same would have happened with confidence and supply, but also you are then keeping them in power and letting them have their budget with little control and with a coalition with all the detail and agreement that followed the Scottish model – Donald turned up with two or three things written on the back of an envelope when they did it first time around in the Scottish Parliament – Jim Wallace turned up with a full-blown document. So if you are looking at this other than anything other than a narrow party political point of view, full-blown coalition was the better way and after all, there was only one offer on the table.  “Charles [Kennedy] said his political compass felt all out of shape and I understand that because it is different and will involve compromise and some of that will be painful but I think it will be about delivery, delivery, delivery and if we deliver on the promises then we will be all right…” It’s an interesting loyalty to this coalition from a man who has rebuffed many attempts by both Labour and the Tories to acquire him for their benches over the years – Brown even tried to persuade him to join his so-called Cabinet of all the talents as recently as 2007 – but he says the coalescing of political opinion is a consequence of how party politics have changed. Campbell joined the Liberal Party at Glasgow University in 1959 in what he says was ‘a big act of rebellion’ against staunchly Labour-supporting parents and a slavish west coast adherence to the Labour Party. He admits that in terms of political ideology there was little to choose from but he simply ‘felt comfortable as a Liberal’. “For most of the time he was alive until he died in 1994, John Smith would ask me, ‘what the f*** are you doing in the Liberal Party when you should be in the Labour Party, usually after we had had rather too much red wine to drink. He was right in the assumption that that is where I fitted but my answer to John Smith was that I was a gut Liberal. Look, West of Scotland Labour was not an attractive sight when I was growing up and you know, Iain Davidson [Labour MP Glasgow South West] had a pop at us and principles this week in the House but has he turned his attention to what has been going on in Glasgow City Chambers, probably not? “At various times I have been approached, I was even approached through my wife by the Chief Whip of the Tories with an offer of a safe seat but I would never have moved either way. I am a Liberal Democrat and I have always been comfortable with it despite John Smith’s robust interventions. We have been through flood and tempest to get where we are today. I lived through the botched merger with the SDP when Screaming Lord Sutch was getting more votes than us in by-elections and then part of the Ashdown 18 in 1992 and then in 1997 when we got 43 seats and as we steadily built up from there and then came the Iraq war and although I was slightly incapacitated because I was at home getting treatment [for cancer] when Charles was getting called Chamberlain Charlie and we were called quislings and jeered at in the Chamber because of our opposition to the war, it was a terrible time but now this blurring of the edges is a feature of our politics. Afterall, what divides us now? Clause 4? Europe? Well, there are still people like Diane Abbot who would no doubt argue for the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and of exchange and people like Bill Cash, people like that on the Tory right, who will argue for coming out of Europe so, at the margins, there are people who keep the flame alive for what used to be the badges and icons of the left and right but the great mass has moved on and there is a coalescing and the differences are often of nuance rather than principle.” Born in Glasgow, in 1941 to working-class parents who although both capable of higher education, circumstances and timing rendered that an unachievable dream. His mother was a very fine sportswoman who was capable of playing hockey for Scotland but at 16 her own mother was widowed and had to take over the running of the family shop. Campbell’s mother had to work there at weekends, meaning she couldn’t play hockey and her ambitions were put to one side. His father wanted to be a doctor but left school at 14 and went to work in a tea broker’s office as the office boy and then did his apprenticeship as a joiner. He had his own business but it folded at the beginning of the war and he went to work in local government where he ultimately ran the building department for Glasgow Corporation. Campbell says it was because of their own thwarted educational ambitions that they both were Labour supporters, believing everyone had the right to a free education. Campbell himself was educated at Hillhead High School in Glasgow and then the University of Glasgow, graduating with an MA and an LLB. He was elected President of the Glasgow University Liberal Club in 1962, and of the Glasgow University Union 1964–65. He was involved in debating at the Union and with the Dialectic Society, where his contemporaries included former Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine, Donald Dewar and John Smith. He later received a scholarship to Stanford University, California.  A successful sprinter at university (he broke Olympic gold medalist Wyndham Halswelle’s 53-year-old Scottish 300 yards record in 1961), he competed for the Great Britain team in the 200 metres and 4x100 metres relay at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo and captained the Scotland team at the 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica. He also captained the Great Britain athletics team in 1965 and 1966, and held the British 100 metres record from 1967 to 1974. At one time he was known as “the fastest white man on the planet”, running the 100m in 10.2 seconds twice during 1967. He qualified as an advocate before he became a politician and was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1968, becoming a Queen’s Counsel in 1982. Always politically active, he became chairman of the Scottish Liberals in 1975, and was a candidate at various general elections between 1974 and 1983. After three failed attempts, he was finally elected as Member of Parliament, for North East Fife, at the 1987 General Election. He was made the Liberal Democrat chief spokesman on foreign affairs and defence in 1992. He considered standing as a candidate to replace Paddy Ashdown as party leader in the 1999 leadership election but despite considerable internal encouragement, decided against it. Instead, he became deputy leader to Charles Kennedy and ultimately succeeded him as leader in 2006. He promoted many younger MPs to his frontbench team including former MEP Nick Clegg as Home Affairs spokesperson and 26-year-old Jo Swinson as Scotland spokesperson. However, the question on many lips when he was made leader, was whether, then aged 64, he had already missed his best opportunity. He was a short-lived leader – of just 19 months – criticised for being too old and out of step with the new more casual politics displayed by the youthful David Cameron. But despite being an MP for 23 years, fighting six elections, graciously, if ill advisedly, stepping aside in the leadership contest that saw Paddy Ashdown made leader and then withstanding cruel sniping about his abilities when he eventually became leader, he was still seen as a caretaker leader filling the role following the painful ousting of Charles Kennedy and the eventual anointment of Nick Clegg. He says he has no regrets. “You are right after all this time,” he laughs. “After all this time, I have become a government backbencher. This was not the height of my political ambition when I came through the porthole, I can tell you. But politics is politics and it is a rough old game and to be slightly expansive, I have had three lives; in sport, as a QC and as leader of the Liberal Democrats, oh, and one other, which I don’t mention much, but I also survived cancer and if you take a view about life then there were as good or better athletes than me who never got a chance, [as] good or better lawyers who didn’t get a chance, and [as] good or better politicians who didn’t get a chance and of course, people who I knew who didn’t survive cancer so I think I have had enormous good fortune and if you have had good fortune then there is nothing to regret. I often say I have had tons of opportunity and occasionally lacked application so I am not bitter. “Yes, like fantasy football, yes, there are those moments where you think, ‘what would I have done if I was leader now’ but that is for private rumination. I am intensely loyal. It’s no secret on the occasions that we discussed the potential for coalition I twice made interventions but in the end, unlike Charles who couldn’t bring himself to vote for it, I did grit my teeth and voted for it because I think if you are an ex-leader then you are slightly constrained. Jim Callaghan said you shouldn’t interfere with the man at the wheel and don’t spit on the deck and when you have been leader you have an obligation in that regard.” And so it was with this in mind that Campbell eventually voted for the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition. He says that he has been staggered by the easy relationship between Cameron and Clegg and has faith in the coalition lasting. “There is a meeting of minds and a detailed document to work to and my understanding is that the day-to-day stuff is going like a fair with no problems at all and civil servants saying things are working extremely well. “There is a steel core to Nick Clegg which he demonstrated throughout the negotiations and particularly with the parliamentary party during these sometimes late-night episodes that we had. He has clear views, is not afraid to express them, doesn’t take prisoners and in government he will not be intimidated or alarmed by the degree of responsibility he now manages.” But is he a Liberal Democrat or just a Tory in disguise?  “Well, of course, Leon Brittan tried to get him to join the Tory party when they worked together in Brussels but mark you, Leon is pretty left on Europe and other sorts of personal issues that you and I have been discussing, Mandy, in fact, even when I speak to him I rarely find anything to disagree with him on. Nick didn’t join the Tories, maybe because his mother is Dutch and there is a great sense of liberalism there but yes, he is absolutely a Liberal Democrat. I think the things that will test this coalition will not be the things that have been agreed or written down, it will be events, dear boy and things that come from the clear blue sky…” One of those early events has been the expenses revelations about Lib Dem star performer, David Laws, which in the end forced him to resign as Chief Secretary to the Treasury because of the unintended consequence of his sexuality being revealed and the intense media interest. “David Laws is a friend of mine and you can argue it any which way and of course, the newspapers have done that but I think he took the view that this was all becoming a distraction in his pivotal post in the government and I think he was right. There is a shading between the expenses issue and his privacy and the boundaries are not easily defined and I regret as someone I hope of a liberal mind that he did not feel it possible to be entirely open about his sexuality in a way in which would have made his life more comfortable. “We all have skeletons in our cupboard and I suppose one argument that I have seen repeated is that the Lib Dems have not been under scrutiny before and it is of course an inevitable consequence of where we are now and that is something we have to live with as part of being more prominent in government and in our commitment to more transparency that people may look around and there may be things that embarrass you. “There was an opportunity to react differently in this new era of new politics but I think the pressure was intolerable. The tolerance of your friends and family and colleagues can be enormously supportive but if you are being traduced from the front pages of newspapers, it is nonetheless painful. My wife and I had this in 1987 when there was an allegation of an affair between her and David Steel and we lived through it for a period and I have never forgotten how much pressure there was for 72 to 96 hours and in the end, the newspaper apologised and paid up but that all takes several months and it is very difficult to be rational during that time and David is a sensitive man and I can just imagine that he found that situation absolutely intolerable. “What would I have done in Nick Clegg’s place? Well, I would never have thought about asking someone what their sexual orientation [was] but maybe that’s an illustration of the tolerant circles we live in and I would have assumed that by the time I appointed someone to be shadow minister for environment, which I did with Chris Huhne, that I knew enough about their character to be satisfied that I was making the right pick. If they [Cameron and Clegg] did have those discussions then Nick Clegg certainly did not know about David Laws. I had no idea. I just thought he was an enormously private person and we occasionally had dinner together both Elspeth and I, but I would never have thought to ask him about his private life. So yes, I was close to David Laws but I guess you now reflect on what that means in the context of a friendship based on politics. “This is a job that has moments of great intimacy when you are, for instance, fighting for your survival and other moments when there are different loyalties. Simon Hughes and I stood against each other and during that period your loyalties are a little less obvious, shall we say, but before that, we had been on very close terms. “You are provoking me to think about something that I haven’t thought about before but in a sense, the fact that I haven’t thought about it before answers your questions – it didn’t matter to me. This place [the House of Commons] is no different from the rest of Britain, except the people that are here are sufficiently self-confident that they think they can make a difference. But it is that old Merchant of Venice thing of ‘prick us, do we not bleed?’– we are human. Maybe there is this higher expectation of us because although we legislate mostly about non-moral issues, every now and again, we have to legislate around moral issues like abortion and because we take stands on these things, I suspect people think we contribute to a societal morality. I remember a judge called Lord Avonside in the days when we were involved in disputed custody and I remember the argument on one side was that the wife was an adulteress and the husband wasn’t and the judge said, ‘I would rather a warm-hearted adulteress brought up these children than a cold-hearted elder of the church’ and I was rather taken by that and what would the public prefer to have an adulteress MP who held the government to account at every turn or someone who was a model of moral propriety but never made a speech and never asked a question? “I hope David Laws does come back because the thing to remember about Laws is that he is clever, clever, clever. He is the sharpest knife in the box, by a long distance and it is not just that he has a double first from Cambridge because I have known many double firsts and they have no judgement but, save on the matter we have been discussing, his judgement has always been exemplary and I think he is a sad loss to this government.” So what of Campbell’s role. So far he has not even secured the coveted role of chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee which many presumed would be his. He admits that Nick Clegg, the man Campbell himself promoted into the shadow cabinet in opposition, has not even picked up the phone to speak to him since the election, let alone seek his sage advice on the future of government or a potential role for him in it. He laughs. “I have been in this business long enough to know that ‘I want, doesn’t get’. You have to take the opportunities that present themselves and don’t pine for the things that aren’t,” he says rather prosaically. “I think if anything, I am hyper rational, if there is such a thing. Yes, it would be very nice to get a call from Nick Clegg…but I am not staying at home in case the phone rings…” Related articles: Moore of the same 5 September 2010 Taking power 5 September 2010 What Labour did next 25 June 2010 The Alexander Technique 28 May 2010 Made from girders 26 April 2010 See all articles in this category Submit a comment |
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