Archive for charles kennedy
TV leaders' debates – the dos and don'ts, featuring Batman
Total Politics asked me to pen some words of advice to the party leaders ahead of tonight’s first TV debate. Here’s what I said: Dear Party Leader, The impact on campaigns of debates in other countries shows how your debate could be not only be historic but also campaign changing. Lower expectations The lower the [...]
Charles Kennedy joins Twitter
Welcome to 30th tweeting Lib Dem MP: @charles_kennedy You can follow them all via the Twitter list I maintain at http://twitter.com/#list/markpack/libdem-mps
Why politics should be about personalities
Tony Benn’s lament that politics should be about issues, not personalities, is one echoed even by many who would struggle to find any issues on which they agree with him.
But it’s not a view I share. Why? Because the detailed policies of election manifestos or conference speeches frequently get swept aside in power by events. [...]
Were Hoon and Hewitt of the wrong generation to succeed?
There are many, many reasons why the snow coup melted away so quickly. In amongst them is the lack of any groundswell of support, whether from backbench MPs or activists around the country, for the latest attempt.
Today’s Guardian throws an interesting light on the detail of how such grassroots opinion is followed in contemporary politics:
Downing Street on Wednesday [...]
Follow the yellow brick road? The Liberal Democrats' general election campaign
Here is my chapter from the Total Politics Guide to the 2010 General Election, looking at the prospects for the Liberal Democrats: The 1997 general election turned out to be a once in a generation opportunity for many local Liberal Democrat campaign teams to gain a Parliamentary seat from the Conservatives. At the tail end [...]
Book review: Mark Oaten’s Screwing up
The repeated references to the stress caused by going bald sums up the good and the bad of Mark Oaten’s autobiography. In Screwing up: How one MP survived politics, scandal and turning forty, Mark Oaten tries to explain his mid-life crisis – its causes and its impact. Talking about the impact of going bald usually [...]
Jeremy Thorpe interview
I carried out this interview with Duncan Brack for the Journal of Liberal History in 2000, at a time when Charles Kennedy was Liberal Democrat leader, William Hague was Conservative leader and Tony Blair was approaching his first general election since becoming Prime Minister in 1997. Jeremy Thorpe was elected as leader of the Liberal [...]
