Political Commentary: The jokes may be old but they're doing their best

ONE REASON given to me for the Liberal Democrats' appearance in Brighton this autumn was not the one most commonly supplied - that, by their choice of venue, they wanted to demonstrate that they were a grown-up party - but, rather, that they had been offered a cut-price rate by the Brighton Conference Centre. If so, it was a mistake to accept.

It is not that I have anything against Brighton (far from it, though the place is being comprehensively ruined by a Labour council), or any sentimental wish to revisit Buxton, Harrogate, Llandudno or even Salford, where the old Social Democrats once misguidedly held their own conference, with the intention of demonstrating that they were a go-ahead outfit in full touch with the realities of modern life. No, the arena was simply too big. It is too big for the large parties also. It would have been too big even for chucking Christians to lions.

That was a popular entertainment which, according to some newspapers, was freely available at Brighton. Mr Paddy Ashdown was, they said, being sacrificed daily.

There was the legalisation of cannabis. I had long been under the impression that the Liberal Democrats, and before them the Liberals, did little else but discuss the legalisation or decriminalisation of this substance. Not so, apparently.

But why on earth should a respectable political party not talk about this change in the law? Numerous respectable persons already believe in making it. I believe in doing so myself. My complaint is that the Liberal Democrats do not go far enough. I would legalise not only cannabis but all drugs, every one of them, principally on the ground that it is not a legitimate use of the State's coercive powers to tell me what I may or may not do with my own biochemistry.

Would there had been a discussion along these lines - for different or contrary views on the matter are certainly capable of being held rationally. But there was little chance of that. We should be grateful perhaps that the Liberal Democrats have gone as far as they have. Of their political ancestors, the SDP believed in interfering in everything; while the old Liberal Party, ever since it embraced the Nonconformist element in the 19th century, was far from liberal, still less libertarian, in its outlook on life.

Instead, Mr Ashdown and other assorted luminaries who were interviewed on their way either to or off the platform tried to get the best of all worlds with an implausiblity which would not have deceived a seven-year-old even if they had been giving away free ice-lollies at the same time. Of course, the Liberal Democrats were a democratic party. That was their pride, strength and joy. But matters were not finally settled yet. Much remained to be done. In the meantime, there were people 'out there' (originally one of Mr Tony Benn's phrases) whose views, or propensity to misunderstand the simplest questions, had to be borne in mind. Democracy was all very well in its way, but it had to be tempered by prudence as the election drew closer.

This was certainly the approach to Mr Ashdown's other rebuffs, on economic policy generally and on the minimum wage in particular. Mr Malcolm Bruce, who recently replaced Mr Alan Beith as chief Treasury spokesman, has been blamed for the confusion surrounding these topics. Mr Ashdown made this and other changes in an attempt to brighten up the party's front bench following the accession of Mr Tony Blair. As well try to add to the dignity of the Church of England by replacing the present Archbishop of Canterbury with Mr Bernard Manning]

Still, we should not be too hard on Mr Bruce. We should not be hard on any of them. They are doing their best. They are even making the odd joke. The speech of the new president, Mr Robert Maclennan, contained several. One of them (about the squirrel being a rat with good public relations) made me laugh out loud: a test, incidentally, which confounds conventional psychological categories, being simultaneously objective and subjective.

The joke may be old. But then, so is the one about our having a Royal Mint but a National Debt. This was made by another speaker and was widely appreciated by the press. In fact it was a standard joke in the Movement. Malcolm Muggeridge, in the first volume of his autobiography, tells of his father (who briefly became a Labour MP) using it at a Croydon street meeting before the First World War.

If the jokes were old, so also was the principal topic of the week. It was the future relationship between a Labour government and the third party. In some versions, it was additionally the proper relationship between the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats even before an election had taken place. Mr Maclennan, a former junior Labour minister, was at pains to express his view that the relationship should be chilly, conducted at intergalactic length. Lord Jenkins, Lord Rodgers and Lady Williams, three former senior Labour ministers, indicated more privately that they had not changed their opinion that some higher level of co-operation between the two parties was desirable in everyone's interests.

Mr Ashdown did his best to keep out of it. At the beginning of the week I thought he had succeeded. I listened attentively to his speech on Thursday. I still thought he had succeeded. My colleagues in the press did not agree. Mr Ashdown had been not only 'brave' but 'skilful'; was also tak ing 'a risk'; had, it appeared, been sending forth signals and coded messages about his inclination towards the Labour Party with all the assiduity of the wireless operator of the Titanic. Alas, I failed to spot them, finding myself in the unhappy position of the ship which was only a few miles away but allowed the stricken liner to sink to the depths of the ocean.

Not that Mr Ashdown's party is sinking. It has won some notable by-elections. Its parliamentary representation, 23, is three more than it was at the election and equal to the combined forces of Liberals and Social Democrats after the 1983 election. One cannot help feeling that the Liberal Democrats have allowed themselves to be depressed by the arrival of Mr Blair, by the consequential shift in the Tory press's scorn from Labour to them and - not least - by their liking, exceeded in the past only by Lord Owen, for speculation about what they would do after an election had produced a Parliament where no party had a majority.

It is clear that, before the election, there will be no pacts or arrangements. It is equally clear that the Liberal Democrats are nearer to Labour than to the Conservatives. This is no reason, as Mr Archy Kirkwood explained last week, why the Liberal Democrats should not sustain a minority Conservative government in office in return for a Bill (as distinct from a Speaker's Conference or a Royal Commission) on electoral reform. That would certainly cause more trouble than anything last week.