I meant to put this up yesterday, but I ran out of time. My teenager, fed up of her mum being welded to a keyboard or a phone for the last few weeks, put her foot down and insisted that I give her a bit of attention. There is something rather wonderful about the weird and sometimes depraved minds of today’s teenagers. There are more of those moments when we’ll be giggling away about something and I’ll suddenly realise that this is my baby I’m laughing with and she understands filth and smut. When did that happen?
Anyway, yesterday morning I was on Good Morning Scotland discussing the future of the Liberal Democrats with presenter Hayley Miller and former Liberal Democrats special adviser Sam Ghibaldan.
On Clegg, I said I didn’t want Nick Clegg to stay simply because it would be a distraction to have a leadership contest, I want him to stay because he championed shared parental leave, better mental health services and giving extra money to disadvantaged kids in school, 3 things which show what Liberal Democrat values are.
Going more into the story that Liberal Democrats have to offer, I went into the particular Scottish dimension. We have led the way on more powers for the Scottish Parliament and we stand up to illiberal and authoritarian policies. I specifically mentioned Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary who has the clearest desk in the Scottish Government because everything – be it indiscriminate and inappropriate use of armed police, to shameful treatment of women in prison to stopping and searching children – is, according to him, an operational matter for somebody else. Willie Rennie and Justice Secretary Alison McInnes do a fantastic job of fighting him on these issues.
You can listen to the interview here from around 1 hour 35 minutes in – and there’s a special sprinkling of Mark Pack, too.
