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Maybe I'm a "man out of time" but nothing in politics makes me more nauseous than Tony Blair or David Cameron strutting around seemingly proclaiming their unique ability to govern. To me, even as a Catholic who you might think would be more used to authority and conscientious obedience to such a figure, the leader, whether of party or government, should be no more than "primus inter pares" and probably more administrator-in-chief pulling together the ideas and energies of those around him or her.

And so I was already in the mood to comment on Linda Jack's blog on Friday, outlining a paper that went to FPC stressing that we needed our "Narrative" (what?) to hook into Ming as leader. But now I presume that paper is the one by Greg Simpson ("head of policy and research" for the Lib Dems) that's been leaked to the Independent and about which Andrew Grice has written at some length today.

This seems to have met with some approbation, not least by Linda herself again, but also so far with Paul Walter on his own blog and Richard Huzzey writing at Lib Dem Voice. So I'm going to be slightly contrary and demur from this Ming-fest. Not because I don't believe Ming capable of it. Far from it. I think he has more wisdom on his shoulders than Blair and Cameron combined - and some of the more intemperate and personal remarks that always surface about him after a policy announcement say to me that many have no counter to him other than ad hominem.

But I do not believe that pandering to the cult of celebrity that has permeated politics as much as our prime time television is the radical liberal way to "re-establish in the minds of voters the 'anti-establishment' core of our liberal philosophy." Indeed, I'd say that one of our weaknesses as a party continues to be not that the leader is invisible, but that voters have even less idea of who else might be in a Lib Dem government than they do of a Tory or Labour government. SImon Hughes can't do everything you know! Okay, that's a bit harsh - many of our front bench team are getting better coverage than ever previously - but you know what I mean.

Our credentials for government do not stand alone on some "narrative" centered on the leader (I've still to work out what this actually means, and I think "ideology" is sufficient). A leader who is already (and in some circles for a long time before he even became leader) the most recognized figure, but on the radicalism of the whole party.

We are already way out of my personal "comfort zone" by being too pedestrian, not radical and not liberal enough. If Greg's advice is important it is in his exhortation to be more radical. But it applies to us all. And the way we choose not to thrust forward a leader as some kind of party champion or "born to govern" chief like Cameron can be part of that radicalism. I hope we don't join the cult of personality crowd that this advice seems to advocate, though I don't doubt Ming is up to the task were we to.

Technorati Tags: narrative, radicalism, lib dems, ming campbell

Having established myself as an anarcho-geo-libertarian-mutualist I can't help wondering why is it that many libertarians seem to gravitate towards the Conservative party. A party with less libertarian instincts I can hardly imagine. Whatever their rhetoric on occasion, when they tactically oppose Labour's assaults on peoples' freedoms for example, when it comes down to it they are the archetypal we know best patristic party that is happiest telling the plebs what they can and cannot do, should and should not expect.

They may point to Thatcher's rolling back of the state in the form of privatisation of government owned business assets, but a true Libertarian cannot be happy with reform merely of the economic sphere. Rolling back the state means ending interference in all areas of our lives. Anything else is authoritarian. And so, it is with little surprise that I find this reported in today's Observer:

Tories highlight cannabis dangers in drug blueprint

Jo Revill and Nick Watt
Sunday July 8, 2007
The Observer

The health risks of cannabis are so great that it should now be reclassified as a class B drug, carrying much greater penalties for possession and trafficking, says David Cameron's new blueprint for dealing with Britain's growing addiction problems.

The Tory leader has been convinced by emerging evidence that a strong form of the drug, skunk, is causing an epidemic of mental health disorders. A report being published this week by a Conservative policy commission will confront the issue, recommending an upgrading of the drug to class B, as well as arguing the case for a complete transformation of addiction treatment in Britain.

What utter bollocks. Look, the rush to create ever stronger strains (and actually the evidence is mixed - while people report finding stronger strains the prevalence of those strains is far from clear) mirrors precisely the ever stronger concoctions of alcohol produced under prohibition. If you want to control such production, the best way is to free it up and regulate it lightly. If the problem is primarily with growing brains (and the science here is also mixed as I've mentioned before) then, as with alcohol and tobacco, make it illegal for licensed vendors to sell it to minors. But while all vendors are unlicensed and unregulated there are no controls and it is pot luck, if you pardon the pun, as to whether the authorities catch someone selling to kids.

It is fact that cannabis can be a sociable drug. It is fact that cannabis can be a soothing drug for all sorts of ills, from stress to MS and arthritic pain. Indeed only on Friday there was a case of a grandmother effectively being allowed by the courts to continue to use cannabis as pain relief. But the silly side of the law means she cannot cultivate it for her own use, so she has to go to a criminal to get hold of it by definition.

The drugs laws in this country are a mess. And no party seems really to want to grasp the nettle and look at how individual freedoms to do what one wants with one's own body and mind, where it does little or no harm to anyone else, can be combined with protecting the truly vulnerable. Yes, addictions kill. But they mainly kill because the market in addictive things is so often criminal and the vulnerable are open to the worst kind of exploitation. Therefore I say that the authoritarian state, with regard to addictive substances at least, is complicit in those deaths. And by extension, the party that imposes more prohibition are murderers.

They can change the language if they like - the Tories say the phrase "war on drugs" is outdated and doesn't convey what they want to achieve - but returning to ever more criminal sanctions will harm more people, and will do the law itself a disservice by continuing a charade that everyone knows is upheld more in the breach than the observance. If you ever want to even imagine you might get the vote of this anarcho-geo-libertarian-mutualist, Cameron, you're going to have to do a lot btter than this knee-jerk classic moral panic nonsense.

Technorati Tags: tories, conservatives, Dave the chameleon, libertarianism, cannabis, drugs laws

See, it's still one rule for them and another for the rest of us...

In order to try to get extra work out of our squaddies we send to fight and die on our behalf, defense contractor Quinetiq has been testing "zombies" for use in combat situations...

UK army tested 'stay awake' pills:

A controversial drug which can keep people awake for days has been tested by the UK military, MPs have been told.

Modafinil pills - known on the drugs scene as "zombies" - are used to treat the rare sleeping disorder narcolepsy.

The Ministry of Defence has previously denied testing the drug on troops although it reportedly bought thousands of pills ahead of the Iraq war.

Defence contractor Qinetiq told the commons' science committee the drug had recently been tested for military use.

So we have American pilots downing speed so they can fly further and kill Canadians and now this. Who took the major shareholding in Quinetiq when our government flogged off the Defense Establishment Research Agency? Carlyle Group. European Chairman at the time...Rt Hon John Major.

After Eggwina you'd have thought Mogadon was more likely his drug of choice though, wouldn't you.