Lloyd Evans watches as Ming Campbell attempts to revive his party and leadership and witnesses a performance which is typically, well, Liberal Democrat.
Lloyd Evans
The final day of the Lib Dem conference and the leader’s chance to silence the ‘Sling Ming’ plotters. Mr Campbell strode into the hall wearing a dark suit and a lime green tie and shook hands with an Asian in a wheelchair. Beside him his glamorous wife Elspeth sported a white tunic with big Andy Pandy buttons. This sent a nicely judged message: I am clearly the First Lady and therefore the man beside me must be the prime minister-in-waiting (and waiting and waiting).
At the rostrum Ming began haltingly, weakly. He asked a question, ‘What sort of country do we live in?’ and gave queasy, unattractive answers. ‘Civil liberties stolen, shoddy secret arms deals.’ My heart began to pound as if I were watching my son struggling in the Nativity play. But he relaxed with the first eruption of applause and after that he was confident, commanding even. He dealt firmly with the speculation about his leadership. ‘I answer to you. And not to the media!’ he thundered, jabbing an emphatic finger downwards like an anxious baker testing a cake.
Ming can certainly project calmness and energy but his reassuring grandpa image is far from perfect. There’s a Hannibal Lecterish gap between his teeth and he has a weird serpentine habit, just before making a joke, of caressing his lower lip with a pale inch of tongue. And his declarations lack substance. In fact he talks like the ghost of Solon – full of fine sentiments and cloudy nation-building ideals but with no detail, no meat. ‘The Liberal Democrats will never be silenced. … We know exactly what we stand for.’ Good for you, Ming. ‘We’re radical, responsible and liberal.’ No way! ‘At the next election we’ll compete for every vote and every seat. I will work every day to secure the maximum number of MPs in the next House of Commons.’ Er, Ming. That’s not worth saying in your sleep, let alone at your party conference. And his script-writers tend to enliven old jokes in a way that makes them feel mortally ill. His attack on Cameron’s policy switches culminated in this. ‘The laddie’s all for turning.’ And a pop at Boris missed by a mile.‘Boris Johnson. Just imagine that – the blondest suicide note in history.’
Ming really catches fire when he evokes Gordon Brown. It gets personal. ‘You, you!’ he shouted, ‘you could have prevented Tony Blair from embarking on the catastrophe of the Iraq war. This is your legacy Mr Brown. The environment degraded, civil liberties eroded, Iraq invaded.’ Nice assonance there on the final three participles and, yes, if I want someone to draft a get-well-soon card to a sick relative I’ll call Ming straight away. But platitudes put voters to sleep and if I were a LibDem I’d be worried by the complacency of my leader. Then again, complacency has never worried the LibDems. It has only defined them.
Bravely, Ming addressed the question of his maturity. ‘In the next election, age will be a factor. You bet it will, because I’m going to make it one.’ He then stressed his great experience and judgement. He meant ‘wisdom’ of course but he’s too clever to say that out loud. We had to infer it. Ming’s problem isn’t that he looks like a walking mummy but that he’s so comfortable looking like a walking mummy. He has one of those kindly old-fashioned faces that gaze out at you from Victorian encyclopaedias. There’s an air of respectable munificence about him as if he spends most of his time founding orphanages. This isn’t modern. It isn’t relevant or sexy. But it’s thoroughly Liberal Democrat. Plenty of gravitas. No weight.
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