Liberal Democrat conference

Sir Menzies Campbell

Indefinite leave to remain

  • The Guardian,
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With Hurricane Gordon heading for Manchester this weekend the gentler eddies of cyclone Ming were still keeping Liberal Democrat pennants fluttering on the Brighton seafront yesterday. Sir Menzies Campbell has not had a bad week, certainly a better one than he might have feared at the start. In truth that was already clear before he rose to speak yesterday and the words themselves did not add much to a conference which reached its climax on Tuesday when the leadership got its way on tax, as it might not have done, and when Charles Kennedy's attempt at a comeback received a merely tolerant reception in the hall.

Not every party conference speech needs to fly high to be counted a success, which is fortunate for Sir Menzies since his performance, which improved as he went on, was only a little better than routine. A self-assembly kit of useable themes and stock phrases, the text did the job without touching on anything that might be considered particularly brave or original. Much of it could have been cobbled together from the leftovers of past speeches from past leaders, all promising to take "the tough decisions that really make a difference to people's lives". There is nothing distinctive about that. His claim to address "the politics of substance" ran little further than a summary of tax policy that has already been much discussed.

More ambitious was Sir Menzies' tentative positioning of his party as a potential partner in government. Referring (as he often does) to his careers as an athlete, lawyer and MP, Sir Menzies described "the opportunity to lead our party from opposition towards government" as the fourth challenge of his life. He was right to point out that his party is already in power in Scotland and local government, but the coming question is what the Liberal Democrats would do if the next general election fails to produce a majority for any party. That possibility is underlined by today's Guardian/ICM poll, which shows both Labour and the Conservative party struggling to win the support of much more than a third of the electorate.

The poll puts the Liberal Democrats on 22%, which will satisfy the party that Sir Menzies can hold his ground against David Cameron. Coalition government at Westminster is a more distant prospect than some Liberal Democrats want to believe, but the question of the terms that should be demanded of Labour or the Conservatives has been much discussed in Brighton. Sir Menzies does not want to become trapped in a bidding war but his tone, on both domestic and foreign policy, was more of the left than of the right, softer on Gordon than David. He praised many of Labour's ambitions, although not the party's record in government, and fired his shots in Mr Cameron's direction. His call for the Conservative leader to apologise for supporting the Iraq war hit home.

He said nothing about Afghanistan, however, where Nato troops face pressures that are even greater than in Iraq, but have Liberal Democrat support, and nor did he address Europe or constitutional reform. Those absences were balanced this week by his party's successful innovation on taxation, but in the autumn, when parliament returns, Sir Menzies will need to find new themes of his own.

For the moment, his party ended its conference looking resilient, confident and prepared to wait to see how far Sir Menzies will take it. He is unlikely to work the sort of magic that could put it in power, but he has avoided crisis and has time to grow into a job that he acquired little more than six months ago in the worst of circumstances. Commentators like to describe speeches as make or break, but the reality was that this one was neither. There is no single hurdle ahead for Sir Menzies to jump, just a long slog to clarify and refine what he is aiming for. Yesterday's speech saw him move forward and he will be pleased enough with that.

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