Where Is The Scrutiny?

Susan Kramer was on Question Time, while Evan Harris had been on the radio earlier, as he often is. But as things stand, their party of government is exempt from an important form of scrutiny. Either of them should have a Fleet Street column. There is also room for Charles Kennedy, Simon Hughes, Sir Menzies Campbell, Olly Grender, Paddy Ashdown, Mark Oaten and others. Really, every national newspaper, except perhaps the Mirror Group ones, should have a resident Lib Dem. I repeat that this is because they need scrutiny.

Scrutiny of schemes to join the euro. Or to grant an amnesty to illegal immigrants. Or to abolish church schools. Or to raise the income tax threshold, but without the wholesale restructuring that would guarantee everyone a tax-free income of at least half national median earnings at the given time. Or to reverse the erosion of civil liberties, but without therefore restoring proper sentencing and proper prison regimes because we could once again have confidence in convictions. Or to give the vote to prisoners. Or to allow 16 and 17-year-olds to appear legally in porn films that would then haunt them on the Internet for the rest of their lives. Or to advocate in this country openness, decentralisation and the election of everything (and that by means of STV), while also subscribing to European federalism.

Those, remember, are only the things that have managed to become party policy. Lib Dem columnists would give an insight into the various milieux that produced such policies, into the ideas that circulate around them and provide their context, and thus into the minds and character of the people involved in that process. Where are they?

Still, a certain amount of such insight will be given by the election of a new Deputy Leader. Soon after Vince Cable won it, he had to deputise at PMQs. On the subject of the Lib Dem Deputy Leadership Election, John Prescott averred that "In the pubs and clubs of Hull, they talked of nothing else." In the pubs and clubs of the Westminster Village, while they may be talking of others things, nevertheless they are now talking of this, too. So, where is the scrutiny?