The well-ordered bookcase behind Ming Campbell’s desk contains the usual Westminster mix of political biographies and current affairs. An emphasis on the Middle East and international affairs reflects his abiding passion. But there is also a copy of Heroes, the recently published book of essays by his good chum Gordon Brown.
The friendship grew out of their common links to Fife on the east coast of Scotland, which Campbell represents as an MP. It was cemented by chats on long train journeys to and from their constituencies. Brown’s father studied at the University of St Andrews, of which Campbell is chancellor, and there is a clear bond between the two men: “Fife, families and football is what we talk about when we meet. Occasionally we talk about political gossip because everyone talks about it. But yes, we are friends.”
It seems to have survived the trauma of recent events, when Brown offered Campbell places in his new government. At least one was intended for the cabinet table itself. “It was a novel suggestion and I had to go away and think about it,” he says. “But once I did that and considered council tax, nuclear policy, Iraq, identity cards, tuition fees, BAE Systems – these are all things to which we are diametrically opposed. How could the Liberal Democrats benefit from this? These were such poor policy positions.”
Campbell provides, for the first time, full details of the events leading up to the offer, which Brown made at a head-to-head meeting on Monday 25 June, two days before he was due to take over as prime minister. Lines of communication had already been opened between Lord Kirkwood, Campbell’s chief of staff, and the soon- to-be-chancellor, Alistair Darling. However, Campbell claims that the first he knew of it was when Brown called him in during the week of the handover. Brown put to him four issues. The first was whether the Lib Dems would operate a policy of “opposition for opposition’s sake”, to which Campbell happily said no. The second concerned a letter on constitutional reform that the Lib Dem leader had sent Brown. The third was the issue of Liberal Democrats working as independent advisers to the government, something with which Campbell says he felt entirely comfortable.
The fourth proposition – formal places in the government – took him by surprise. Campbell says it had never been mentioned to him by Brown in any of their previous conversations. “If you think about it, for anyone it would have been an interesting question,” he says. Several names were mentioned during the discussion, including that of Lord Ashdown, although the former Lib Dem leader was linked to no specific post in the Brown government. Campbell says other names were discussed “by way of illustration”. Intriguingly, these included prominent members of the Lib Dem front-bench team in the Commons, although Campbell himself, it appears, was not offered a job.
Strictly confidential
After discussions with his closest aides, Campbell decided quickly to turn down the deal. But he wanted to do his old friend the courtesy of informing him face-to-face at a meeting scheduled for lunchtime the following day. Tellingly, at no point did he discuss the offer with his shadow cabinet. Campbell implies they could not be trusted with the information. “It was my understanding that this was a confidential discussion. I was operating on the basis that I would be acting as confidentially as it was possible to do.”
These plans were thrown into disarray when that night Michael White of the Guardian called to say that the story had leaked and would be splashed across the front page of the next morning’s paper. Only then was a call put through to Brown’s office to say the deal was off. And yet, in spite of this, Ashdown still went ahead with a scheduled meeting with Brown where he was offered the Northern Ireland job. This, says Campbell, is a matter for Ashdown, who assured him all along that he would defer in all matters to his commanding officer.
Throughout this torrid period, did Campbell let friendship cloud his judgement? Why didn’t he turn down the offer of a cabinet post for Ashdown as soon as it was suggested? Quite why Campbell didn’t realise just how compromising such a deal would have been remains a question about his judgement. “I plead guilty to thinking,” is his response when I push him on it.
Amid this talk of alliances, I ask him about the consequences of a hung parliament at the next general election. What conditions would he set for an alliance, either with Brown or with David Cameron’s Conservatives, especially now that constitutional reform is in the air? Campbell’s discomfort is palpable. He is keen not to give away his negotiating position in advance of the election, and he remains bruised by the electorally disastrous experience of the alliance with the Social Democratic Party in the 1980s. At first he gives the stock answers: “My position is that we need maximum votes and maximum seats and that way we get maximum influence . . . It would be quite presumptuous to start thinking what the result might be and what you’d do depending on that result.” However, it is not possible to avoid the question entirely, especially as his party was prepared to go into a coalition with Labour for eight years north of the border. “No party, I think, can avoid public responsibility and we didn’t do that in Scotland.”
As a politician, he should probably continue to avoid the question, but as a man, Campbell is too honest. I insist that surely the condition for any alliance after the next election would have to be proportional representation for Westminster. He thinks carefully and then puts the question beyond doubt: “Let me put it to you this way. PR is fundamental to our analysis of what is necessary for the United Kingdom. It would be inconceivable for us to be in a full-blown coalition with a party that does not accept that.”
There it is. No coalition without fully fledged electoral reform. This would apply to talks with either Labour or Tories. Nor is he talking about the Alternative Vote (AV), a non-proportional system in which voters opt for candidates in order of preference within single constituencies. Brown remains unconvinced of the merits of PR, though he is known to be considering AV. The negotiations in the event of a hung parliament could be interesting indeed.
On wider policy issues, Campbell, following a reshuffle, is putting his faith in new names: David Laws is in charge of a review of education policy and Norman Lamb is doing the same for health. With Vince Cable continuing to speak on Treasury matters and Nick Clegg at home affairs, I wonder if this is part of a conscious move to establish the Lib Dems on the right. “It’s a conscious move to liberalism,” he replies. And invoking the politics of the 1960s Liberal leader Jo Grimond, he says: “How can a Liberal party ever abandon the idea of choice and competition? So you exploit it, rather than allowing it to be master.” He bridles at the idea that the new direction marks an end to the strategy of positioning the Lib Dems to the left of Labour. He contrasts his party’s classic liberalism with new Labour’s authoritarian streak.
After being almost universally praised during his time as foreign affairs spokesman, when he challenged the government on Iraq more forensically than just about any other MP, Campbell has had a hard time from the moment he became leader. He made a hash of his first Prime Minister’s Questions and has struggled to recover his confidence since. There are rumblings that he is not up to the job. Some in his party talk of removing him before the next election. The events of the past fortnight have not helped his case.
But there are signs of a new tone. Where once he was not prepared to use his own story for political purposes (his relatively humble origins, his fight against cancer), he is now opening up. He talks of his father, a member of the Independent Labour Party who worked his way up through Glasgow City Council to become general manager of the building department. This informed his attitude to social aspiration: “My parents did their best for me, sent me to a local authority school which distinguished itself by playing cricket and rugby. They paid modest fees, you wore a cap, and of my sixth form of 31, 29 went on to higher education. This was part of the Scottish tradition. Education was the mechanism, the means by which you develop.”
Campbell seems comfortable, even flattered, when I suggest that he stems from the same tradition as three late Scottish parliamentarians – Donald Dewar, John Smith and Robin Cook – even though these three belonged to a different party. “You could say we are all particular types of Scotsmen, with similar views of the world.”
Campbell rarely talks about his recovery from cancer. It does not feature in his biography on the Lib Dem website, but it clearly shook him badly, as he had never been seriously ill before. “A lot of people go through this by the time you get to my age. So that’s why I’m reluctant to make too much of it. I suppose I think it’s better to demonstrate by example rather than just talk about it.”
It is difficult to come away from meeting Menzies Campbell without feeling that you have been in the presence of a fundamentally decent man. He might have been the model for what Brown was talking about when he said the British people had become tired of the celebrity approach to politics. Whether they have become tired enough to give Ming the role of kingmaker in the next election remains to be seen.
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