Tuesday, December 30, 2008

2008: a review of the year in three parts (1) - renaissance bureaucrat in frockcoat surprise!

As usual, it’s time for me to review the year past as seen from the eyes of a party bureaucrat. Except that this year was rather less about bureaucracy and more about romance and campaigning.

As the year began, we (and there was the key first difference from 2007) were a bit busy. The house in Kingsbury was on the market for sale, we had put in an offer on a house in Needham Market, preparations were well advanced for our April wedding and a Presidential campaign was beginning to step up a gear. There were hints that the wheels were about to fall off of the economy, but the sheer horror of what was to come was still to be anything other than a twinkle in Mr Cable’s eye. There would be some implications to come, but I didn’t care - after all, I was in love…

I was on good predictive form though, calling the race for the Democratic nomination as a likely Obama win before the Iowa caucus (blog entry 8 January), and picking out some of the reasons why Hilary would lose. I was struggling with choice and free trade, but nothing new there, whilst preparing to be financially shafted by my employers (no change there either). Boy, was I right there, and we are still to reach agreement a year later. Ros started blogging, and whilst her readership figures were hardly in the Guido/Iain Dale league, ‘Because Baronesses are People too…’ would prove to be a slow-burning precursor for a Presidency to come.

In February, I launched my first attack on the Parliamentary Candidates Association for past uselessness, more in regret than anger. They had a new Chair, so that was alright, wasn’t it? Tory sleaze was back, and wasn’t that going to be a feature of the year to come. Conservatives were beginning to prepare for government. Not by creating policy, no, by demonstrating that they’re view of government was a means of making money and settling scores. Ideas were not to be encouraged. Labour were beginning to implode, the economy was weak, all that Cameron, Osborne and the rest had to do was wait. Wasn’t it?

Labour’s response? More sleaze, more stupidity. Peter Hain left office to spend more time with his home tanning machine and take lessons in basic arithmetic after failing to declare more than £100,000 of donations to his disastrously unsuccessful campaign to be Deputy Leader, whilst Caroline Flint demonstrated exactly why she shouldn’t be allowed to do anything that might require empathy or integrity.

The Bones Commission, which I had suggested to Nick Clegg in the aftermath of his election as Leader (he reads every word I write, you know) via the medium of Liberal Democrat Voice, was at work, and I wasn’t entirely happy with the suggestion that it was all the fault of a bunch of bureaucrats. I could have named names but I was still being nice to people (it wouldn’t necessarily last)

Niceness lasted into March, as I tried a reprise of my role as peacemaker, after Nich Starling and Alex Wilcock had a quite entertaining set-to. Not for the first time, Nich hit the nail on the head, only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by allowing his inner conspiracy theorist to replace intellect and diplomacy. Alex went volcanic in his typically erudite way, unleashing a flow of molten invective all over Norfolk (we were comfortable with that in mid-Suffolk). As usual, Alex saw the light. Nich demonstrated why Tories like him…

At Conference, Lembit moved a motion calling for the role of the Party President to be split into two jobs. In return, I attacked him and the Federal Executive for incompetence, defeatism and an utter incomprehension of the notion of conflict of interest. Whilst two members of the Federal Executive did have the courtesy to defend their stance (Erlend Watson and James Gurling), very few people saw the irony of a declared candidate for the Presidency claming that the job couldn’t be done… The ’I’m 4 Ros’ campaign team sat in a corner of the conference hall, and watched as the motion was passed but without the required two-thirds majority. You can guess which way I voted.

Nick Clegg talked about ‘Faceless Britain’ in his conference speech, and I did see what he was on about, but my first Regional Conference was about to take precedence. It went rather well, and I declared myself to be a fan-boy (thank you, Jennie, for this addition to my vocabulary) of Baroness Hamwee of Richmond upon Thames (is there something in the water in the Royal Borough?)

Reprieved, the ‘I’m 4 Ros’ campaign began to gather momentum, with a number of events, including an astonishingly intellectual fundraiser, starring Brian Eno. We attended the launch of ‘Liberal Youth’ and, although the significance of this was yet to become apparent, I was not to hear the last from them as the year progressed.

My patience with Bob Shaw finally ran out though. He’d been annoying me for a while, with a series of misogynist, snide attacks on Ros. That, I was willing to let go albeit grudgingly, but cowardice and hypocrisy provided too tempting a target. Ironically, it wasn't my last run-in with someone from Taunton Deane...

The big day or, at least, the first of the big days, was coming up fast, yet the Campaign for a Real President could not wait, and we went to the North East for the first big tour. And whilst the Conservatives were demonstrating exactly how not to run an internal party candidate selection. I was even quoted favourably on Conservative Home (don't worry, I'm not turning into Nich Starling...).

The only sunny day in the whole summer (alright, there may have been others but do you remember any?) was timed to coincide with the wedding of baroness and bureaucrat. Whilst the new power couple fled to India for the best part of three weeks of sun, massage and elephants, my old friend, Empress Jessica, reported on the Valladares family wedding of the year for the Amaranth edition of 'Hello' magazine.

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