Our man again

A regular correspondent has asked why I endorse Simon Hughes for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats. It's a good question. I think it's reasonable to have a preference for leader of a party one doesn't support, and in general I favour the promotion within all the main parties of the principles of aggressive liberalism, such as this blog supports. The chances of that happening with the Liberal Democrats as they are currently constituted is nil, and I therefore must adopt other criteria.

Ironically, the leadership candidate I felt was most likely to be sympathetic to those ideals was Mark Oaten, whose political downfall is a sad story. It ought to be recalled - and frequently in the past few years I've found it difficult to do so - that, of all the main parties, the Liberal Democrats took the most principled line on the need to intervene in the Bosnian catastrophe in the early 1990s. The then leader, Paddy Ashdown, was earlier than most in seeing the issues of principle at stake, and I understand from those who were close to him on this issue that he withstood internal party criticism for the amount of time he devoted to it.

The Liberal Democrats' stance on foreign and domestic policy in more recent years has been populist, glib and sometimes highly unprincipled. (The party's opposition to tuition fees is as about as bad a social policy as you could come up with, and is plainly driven by economic interests of the party's core supporters.) In the circumstances, the party is unlikely in the near future to be any sort of voice for a consistent liberalism in British politics. I therefore wish it ill, and choose my preferred leadership candidate accordingly.

I'm also reminded that at the last election I said there were one or two Lib Dem candidates I should like to see returned, and one of those was Chris Huhne. In mitigation, I'll direct your attention to a report in The Times today about Huhne's campaign for the leadership:

In the European Parliament, neither did [Huhne] spend time on foreign affairs nor women’s issues, two other campaign themes. “Chris’s career was extremely effective within a very narrow boundary — the financial services sector,” one MEP said.

During the last full Parliament, between 1999 and 2004, Mr Huhne made 25 speeches to the full chamber, all concerning financial matters. He signed 15 resolutions, mostly about financial matters, though three attacked attempts by religious authorities, including the Pope, to influence legislation.

I never write about the subject here, and it's not the most exciting of issues, but for professional reasons I follow closely the debates on EU financial services directives. Huhne certainly contributed a good deal of knowledge and sense in this area, and that's what I knew of him till recently. (He also co-authored, with the late Lord Lever, a prescient short book twenty years ago on the third world debt crisis.)

As a candidate for the Liberal Democrat leadership, he has shown additional characteristics, delicately described by The Times:

Mr Huhne has thrown buckets of red meat to Liberal Democrat activists in the shape of opposition to a Trident replacement and support for a fuel duty escalator. But he has sought to qualify the positions, raising questions about his judgment.

I came to a definitive conclusion about Huhne when I read this account of the candidates' televised debate:

In a BBC Question Time debate, Simon Hughes and Chris Huhne pushed for troops to leave by the end of 2006. Mr Huhne said he knew from his time in business that deadlines were the best way of ensuring things happened.

What a remark, and what a time to make it. Does Huhne suppose that the setting of an arbitrary deadine will cause the jihadists and Baathists to wind down their operations? Does he expect them to be magnanimous in accepting that they will no longer be provoked by the presence of the occupier? What will Huhne say when these forces, aware that victory has been gained by their suicide attacks on Iraq's nascent civil society, intensify their terrorism and abduct still more hapless and terrified victims? Will he, drawing on his business experience, process the feedback, think outside the box, and proactively reassess his list of actionables? Or will this arrogant and frivolous technocrat recognise that protecting an emerging democracy from theocratic barbarism has some implications for our obligations to others, and security for ourselves?

The Lib Dem leadership is a tough fight, and a fine decision. But in a closely-matched field, I still go for Simon Hughes. May the worst man win.