Here’s the video that was shown at the launch:

You can follow the Liberal Democrat GLA members and candidates, including this new account, in one place via the list twitter.com/markpack/london-assembly.

Liberal Democrat selection campaigns for London mayor are strange beasts, as the party seeks out a mega-campaigner who can rally the troops and pull in more assembly members by his/her coat-tails.   This time, the dynamics were mixed up even more by the entry into the race of the former Montgomeryshire MP, Lembit Opik.  (Lembit had a defeat narrative in which he compared himself to Nelson Mandela, but that’s just too ghastly to discuss in detail.)

However,

In winning the Lib Dem nomination, Paddick has performed an epic feat in political storytelling.  Announcing his candidacy, back in June, Paddick gave us [a] carefully crafted mea culpa.

Read about the mea culpa over on Neil’s blog.

First round
Brian Paddick 1,289 (42%)
Mike Tuffrey 1,232 (40%)
Brian Haley 316  (10%)
Lembit Opik 252 (8%)
Total valid votes: 3,089 

Second round
Brian Paddick 1,567 (51%)
Mike Tuffrey 1,476 (49%)
Majority: 91 (2%)

Commenting, Brian Paddick said:

“I want to thank my fellow candidates for engaging in a high standard of debate throughout the campaign.

“I also want to thank my excellent team without whom I would not have been selected.

“Most of all, I want to thank London Liberal Democrat members who placed their trust and confidence in me to be their candidate for Mayor of London – I won’t let you down.”

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said:

“Brian’s experience is exactly what London needs right now. Whether dealing with the aftermath of the riots or phone hacking and corruption in the Metropolitan Police, Brian has shown in recent weeks that he has the authority and leadership that London needs.

“Brian provides Londoners with a real, credible alternative to Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone.”

As previously covered, Lembit Opik has publicly declared his intention to go for the selection. Regular readers of this site will have seen how controversial that is amongst many Liberal Democrat members (along with other commenters on this site). He has some keen fans along with many ardent critics. The number of fans of his Mayor selection bid page on Facebook has moved up only slightly over the last week, to 185 at the time of writing.

Although no-one else has declared they are running for Mayor yet, there are several other names which frequently come up. Chatting to members around London in the last few weeks, many have said how, were it not for the party being in coalition, they would have liked to see Lynne Featherstone or Sarah Teather be the candidate. With both being ministers that is firmly off the agenda.

Susan Kramer’s run for Mayor in 2000 is the candidature remembered the most fondly by most people who have seen all three Lib Dem Mayor campaigns, but it would be a return to her past. Having been an MP in the interim, Susan Kramer would at least have a reason to argue why she might be a more successful Mayor candidate second time round. That would be a challenge too for Brian Paddick, who has a CV well suited for the role of Mayor and a record of taking on tabloid newspapers which are unpopular with Liberal Democrat activists. (He has sued the Mail for libel successfully and is currently one of those involved in taking legal action against the News of the World over phone hacking allegations.) With a distant third place last time, however, he would have to find a convincing answer to the question, “Why do you think you would do much better this time round?”

Leaving aside Guido’s excitement about Tim Campbell, the more interesting and far more likely high profile candidate would be Floella Benjamin. Recently appointed to the House of Lords, she has an impressive track record in educational and charity work aside from the memories of her as one of the country’s most popular children’s TV presenters. Relatively new to prominence in the party, her main challenge would be to persuade many who know of her TV work that she would also make an effective Liberal Democrat candidate. Many of those who have met her at Liberal Democrat events have come away enthused about her ability.

One question all of the actual runners will face as they emerge is, “Are you serious about trying to win?” For many activists, an enthusiastic “yes” to that question will in fact be off-putting, as the party’s chances of gaining seats on the London Assembly are much higher than those of winning the Mayor contest. But would a campaign whose headline figure isn’t upbeat about winning end up doing even worse?

Either way, the smart candidate will position themselves as an effective member of a team of candidates rather than as someone who is just about wanting to win votes in the Mayor contest.

The 2010 book is one of a series, covering also Labour, Conservatives, SNP, Plaid and the Greens. All the others are single person authored books (with the exception of a more general “Why Vote?” book), with chapter titles that give a list of long and worthy policy areas. They are souped up, lengthened policy manifestos. That sort of book certainly has its place, and is the approach followed by William Wallace for his 1997 title, but it is very good to see that the 2010 Liberal Democrat one takes a different tack.

Danny Alexander may be the main name on it, but he is the editor – and the book is a collection of twenty-six short essays plus a foreword from Nick Clegg. Many of the authors are also people who, in their different ways, are well known and respected with particular audiences outside the ranks of party membership and helpers.

Floella Benjamin and Colin Firth probably have the most public star value, but contributions from people such as the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, friend of Stephen Lawrence (and now Lib Dem councillor) Duwayne Brooks and Janis Sharpe, mother of Gary McKinnon, all have appeal to particular audiences and add up to a welcome picture of a party drawing broad support from people who know what they are talking about.

Danny Alexander (and Polly Mackenzie, who did much of the work pulling the book together) have given us a book that is more varied and interesting therefore than the other party titles in the series and deserve congratulations for that.

What then of the content?

What is Liberalism?

Nick Clegg’s foreword starts with addressing the question, “What is Liberalism?” Not surprisingly freedom and fairness features in his answer, but he also captures that essential contrarian mindset which means, for all the changes in policy and society, one can easily imagine Charles James Fox being a member of the party even now, over 200 years after he was its leader. Clegg writes:

[Growing up] we were expected always to assume that there is a better way of doing things if you only bother to look for it. That’s the spirit I believe is right at the heart of Liberalism … The Liberal Democrats have always been an anti-establishment party, demanding change right at the top and campaigning for power to be taken out of the hands of the elites.

Those interested in the balance between social and economic liberalism in the party will note the David Howarth-style approach of taking one as a means to the other when Clegg says:

You are only free to do things you are capable of doing – things for which you have the resources and understanding. So any effort to increase freedom must also increase people’s capacity, resources and understanding.

This squaring of the circle continues in Danny Alexander’s piece which, coming from the chair of the group writing the party’s manifesto, gives a clear indication of what its priorities will be.

LibDem policy priorities

The first specific policy statement to get a mention is the plan to make our tax system fairer, including raising the income tax threshold to £10,000 – a tax cut which appeals to economic liberals and whose primary target (taking the lowest paid out of income tax completely) appeals to social liberals. It will be paid for by, yes, a mansion tax (though in a rather modified form from the original proposals of autumn 2009) and by closing tax loopholes for the richest.

1992 rides again

Fair taxes, better education, more generous pensions, economic recovery, political reform and a green tinge to it all are the policy areas picked out with specific proposals in Danny Alexander’s piece. For those with long policy memories in the party, it’s the 5Es of 1992 all over again, save with Europe dropped for pensions. And with added, souped up Vince Cable.

Although the chapters that follow are from a wide range of authors, they form a coherent whole – presenting views of a range of experts but with a common set of liberal values frequently stated and applied. This is not a collection of technocrats all saying “we should get things right”; it’s a collection of experts all saying “liberalism is the solution”.

The consistency is also at times a slight weakness, as chunks of several of the chapters could have been said by almost anyone in the party. The individual personalities and experiences of the authors do not always come through in their words and there is little use of personal story telling to reinforce the policy points.

That said some, such as Brian Paddick, Colin Firth and Ed Fordham’s pieces, are strong exceptions – they are clearly all distinctively from them personally. Overall the variation of authors keeps the book more interesting and more varied than the single-author books for the other parties.

What’s the narrative?

The pieces all fit together as a coherent whole, being about freedom and fairness. Values come out clearly in different pieces and are consistent riffs on the party’s main theme, as when Floella Benjamin writes,

While detailed Liberal Democrat policies make me confident I am in the right party, it is our different approach to politics which makes me sure I am a Liberal Democrat through and through.

Dipping in and out of the other party books in the series, the Liberal Democrat one does comfortably stand out as being about the Liberal Democrats, even though words such as fairness are used regularly by other parties.

Not only are the themes reminiscent of 1992, the policies are mostly a comfortable fit with 1997, adjusted for the different political and economic environment. In many ways that is a strength, as the book brings out long-term liberal values rather than the latest technocratic trendiness.

But in one respect it is a weakness. Since 1997 the internet has grown hugely, influencing many of the areas talked about in the book and bringing great economic and social changes. Yet it barely gets a mention. Unfair extradition rules deserve condemnation, and it’s a minor coup to have got Gary Mckinnon’s mother to contribute a piece, but whilst we have a piece on extradition and nothing on the internet and the digital era it’s a book that feels unbalanced.

That criticism aside – and it’s one that is a wider issue in the party than simply this book – the book is a good job, well done. If our general election campaign compares as well to those from other parties as this book does to theirs, we’ll be doing a lot of celebrating later this year.

You can buy Why vote Liberal Democrat? from Amazon here.