A Word or Two About Brian Paddick

I voted for him in the London Mayoral Election. I don't regret my vote for a moment - one of the joys of the proportional system in London is that you can vote strategically and for your personal preference as well. Despite my reservations about him as a former commander in the Metropolitan Police, I felt it made sense for a former, avowedly socially liberal Met officer to offer changes to how the force was governed and run - that issue really being paramount for London (whether it knows it or not). But Paddick crashed and burned. Want to know why?

1) Losing your temper with supportive interviewers really doesn't help your cause.
2) Slating the incumbent during the campaign whilst confessing to nearly joining the Conservative Party suggests you're a closet Tory; being an out gay man partying with Ian McKellen and Elton John suggests you're a screaming queen. Way to split your own vote.
3) Vince Cable would have been a wiser choice after all. Being an existing London MP, with huge economic experience with Shell, a rapier wit and massive popularity, Cable would have been a serious challenger against Boris, let alone Ken. Paddick came across as humourless, arrogant and boring in a campaign dominated by huge, media-friendly personalities; Cable's Commons demolition job of Gordon Brown made him a nation-wide hit, and despite not running for the top Lib Dem job, he hasn't missed a beat. The Tories thought outside of the box in choosing their candidate and it worked - they now have someone in high office with national attention. Cable will never be Chancellor - the Lib Dems should have proven themselves as hungry for power.

Paddick for Equality

Liberal Democratic candidate for London Mayor Brian Paddick has championed the Stonewall report on homophobic attitudes in society.

One fifth of respondents think they would be treated worse by police than a straight person if they reported a crime.

One in five think they would be treated worse by a magistrate if they were to appear before one because they are gay.

60% of gay men and 50% of lesbians think they would be treated worse by prison officers if it was known they were gay.

None of this should be a surprise. Whilst little in life is always true, it's very much the case in London that the Metropolitan Police is institutionally homophobic, whatever else Ken Livingstone or Ian Blair would like to believe. The criminal justice system behind it is equally as bad, if not worse. That one is down to unchallenged bigotry and the other might likely be down to poor training and institutional ineptitude doesn't make any difference to the outcomes. And they're outcomes which we don't like to talk about - they make us feel uneasy. It's impressive that Stonewall is at least beginning to put the evidence of expectations together. They should shame our Home Secretary, or rather they would if she only had a soul.

There is a great deal of difference between changing the law and changing people’s experience.

I've spoken to him about my vote already, but if this were to be a bedrock of his intentions as Mayor, it would certainly guarantee it'll go to him.

Lib Dems Message for 08

The Lib Dems' Nick Clegg sets the scene for '08 adequately on one hand, and very well on the other.

"we should campaign tirelessly to stop the expensive, invasive and unnecessary Identity Cards scheme in its tracks."

It's of course impossible to disagree. For me Clegg's point is undermined through being founded on the government's incompetent loss of data at Revenue & Customs. Whilst it obviously proves that no government, especially the current one, can be trusted with private, personal data which it doesn't need, that's ultimately a sub point.

What we must all remember is that the individual determines the state, not the other way around. It is the fundamental cornerstone upon which all liberal democracies are founded. The government's ID card plans would involve a complete inversion of that principle. You can argue till you're blue in the face that technology has made that irrelevant - the inversion has already taken place. Well maybe - our surveillance society has made true privacy from the state almost impossible in this country - but no technology is one way. To suggest an inevitability about a technology is not to understand the way in which it works. Google can monitor huge amounts of our internet habits, but even Facebook was forced to back down in its attempts to monitor and manipulate its users.

Do you really want some chav temping in the Passport & ID Agency to tell you that you aren't who you say you are? ID cards won't make any difference against terrorism, they won't make any discernible difference against ID fraud and there hasn't ever been a government on this planet which hasn't misused power of this magnitude over its population. And don't forget if this plan comes to pass, your power over the government (which at the moment is supposed to be absolute) will fall away. That must not be allowed to happen. A good start by the new Lib Dem leadership - using Iraq as a touchstone issue changed everything for the party - this too will retain a unique selling point for them.