Decent, statesmanlike - but political valium

In the last hour - as they say on the BBC - Sir Menzies Campbell has sat down after delivering his first annual conference speech as leader of the Liberal Democrats. And first off, I have to say that the speech contained many good things, notably some judicious and well-founded attacks on the two main parties.

Yes, Tony Blair has squandered an historic opportunity to build a progressive consensus. Yes, the gap between rich and poor is now wider than it was under Mrs Thatcher. And yes, a Government which came into power to "save" the NHS is now closing hospitals.

As for David Cameron - well as Ming oh-so-rightly said, where was he when Mr Blair was allowing Britain to be sucked into its biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez? In the Government lobby backing military action against Iraq, that's where.

All good stuff. But political parties - especially those that aspire to be "serious," cannot live by attacks on the opposition alone. And as their conference week in Brighton draws to a close, I am still struggling to work out what the Lib Dems now stand for - other than not being Labour or the Tories of course.

During the last two elections, the party at least had a unique selling point. Okay, so the 50p top rate of tax was more of a symbol than a genuine instrument of redistribution, but it was a potent symbol nonetheless that put clear yellow water between the Lib Dems and the other parties.

Now the party has ditched it in favour of a fiendishly complex set of tax proposals, the main effect of which will be to take hundreds of thousands of middle-income income earners out of the 40pc bracket and into the 22pc bracket. While this might well prove a vote winner if the Tories or Labour don't nick it first, progressive taxation it isn't.

As for Sir Menzies himself, besides the palpable decency and obvious statesmanlike qualities, where was the spark, the star quality that is going to force the public to stand up and take notice as they did with Cameron a year ago?

I listened to today's speech open to being convinced that he is the right man to lead the party. But alas, I remain to be.

Air travel: Monbiot spells it out

I guess a fair few of my regular visitors already read the Guardian, but in case you missed it, I recommend that EVERYONE who has ever stepped on an aeroplane reads this piece by George Monbiot today.

The exponential growth in commercial aviation and the increasing availability of "cheap" flights with complete disregard for their true cost to the environment has been a long-standing concern of mine. Some politicians are now starting to talk about it, but as Monbiot argues, few would be prepared to contemplate the draconian measures that will almost certainly be needed if climate change targets are to be met.

Farewell to the Enquirer

Earlier this year, I was asked to write a weekly political column for the North-West Enquirer, a new weekly regional newspaper based in Manchester. It was a high quality product with which I am very proud to have been associated over the past six months.

Against the backdrop of long-term decline in the newspaper industry, it was a very brave experiment of founders Nick Jaspan and Bob Waterhouse to launch such a paper at this time. Some would say it was foolhardy, but I for one thought that developing a paper as a niche publication might just work in today's increasingly fragmented market.

Sadly, it didn't, and the paper was placed in administration yesterday afternoon after a refinancing package collapsed. The timing was particularly sad in view of the fact that next week's Labour Party Conference is in Manchester and offered great potential for the kind of serious regional-national coverage to which the paper aspired.

I had already written my column for this week, which both looks ahead to the conference and focuses on what seems to me to be the highly damaging issue for New Labour of proposed hospital closures. You can read it in full on my Companion Blog by clicking HERE.

In defence of Benedict

I hold no brief for the Roman Catholic Church. My general view of it is much the same as the bloke who wrote the script for Godfather III. But I do think Pope Benedict is being very unfairly, if somewhat predictably pilloried for his comments about Islam.

Don't get me wrong. If Benedict was primarily a political figure, a Head of Government or Head of any other State but the Vatican, then I would agree that he was under a duty to be inclusive and non-confrontational in his statements about people who held different religious beliefs. Or no beliefs at all for that matter.

But the role of the Pope is not - or should not be - to be a political leader or Head of State. It is to be the spiritual leader of hundreds of millions of Christians across the world.

And if the leader of the world's biggest Christian denomination cannot speak out against another religious faith which, by its very existence, denies the esssential truths of the Christian gospel, then who on earth can?

I have thought for some time now that we have been headed down a very dangerous road in our society, whereby lampooning Christians and Christianity is virtually de rigeur among the liberal elite but criticising any other faith - and in particular Islam - is almost on a par with racism.

Laws purportedly designed to promote "religious tolerance" are instead promoting a form of religious intolerance, whereby no-one is allowed to say anything about another religion, even if its beliefs are antithetical to one's own.

This will naturally militate against belief systems such as Christianity which make exclusive claims to validity, in favour of a syncretistic, New Age mush that holds that all religions are equally valid - and therefore equally meaningless.

I would not be in the least surprised if, in my lifetime, it became a criminal offence in this country to preach the authentic Christian gospel - that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to God.

At the conclusion of her piece in today's Guardian, Madeleine Bunting bewails the fact that the Catholic Church is in danger of "failing the great challenge of how we forge new ways of accommodating difference in a crowded, mobile world," speculating that Pope Benedict has "another direction altogether in mind."

Too right he has, Madeleine. He is trying to take a stand against the relativism that is poisoning Western Culture and threatening to snuff out our religious freedoms. And about time too.

A musical interlude

Ever since I first heard them more than 20 years ago, I have been a huge fan of the massively underrated British band Prefab Sprout. Their main man, Paddy McAloon, is in my opinion the greatest songwriter these islands have produced since John Lennon and the relative lack of commercial success achieved by the band in its 1985-1990 heyday remains, to me, bewildering.

The same cannot be said of Massive Attack. They deservedly enjoyed huge commercial and critical success throughout the 90s and most informed observers rate their 1991 single, Unfinished Sympathy, as one of the greatest dance records of all time.

So it was partly in order to win a fresh audience for a forgotten Sprout classic, and partly as a bit of fun, that my friend David Gladwin and myself set about putting together a mash-up that brings together these two great bands.

The result, "Unfinished Jesse James Sympathy" by Massive Sprout can now be heard on the Prefab Sprout fansite by clicking HERE and scrolling down to the bottom of the Miscellaneous section.

The remix is credited to The Party, a musical outfit consisting of Dave and myself that has been dormant since a frenetic burst of activity in the summer of 1990, when we had the bright idea of mixing Bulgarian plainsong with dance beats. A year later, Enigma did the same thing and had a number one album.

I guess most of us have a story about how we were nearly famous. Well, that's mine.

Deputy leadership podcast now live

My latest podcast focuses on the race for Labour's deputy leadership following last week's declarations by Peter Hain and Harriet Harman, with Alan Johnson, Jack Straw and Jon Cruddas also set to throw their hats into the ring.

My conclusion? Well, although I think Johnson is probably the man to beat, in my view it doesn't matter a great deal who wins, since as Denis Healey rightly concluded, the job is not worth a pitcher of warm spit.

"The week’s smartest move may been made by David Miliband, who this week once again confirmed that he will not contest either of the two leadership posts. If I was being cynical, I would say this almost certainly means that the Environment Secretary has concluded he would really be much better off as Mr Brown’s first Chancellor than as his deputy. For as Mr Brown himself has shown, that’s a job worth far more than a pitcher of spit – warm or otherwise."

The podcast can be heard in full by clicking HERE. To subscribe to the podcast, which updates every Monday, cut and paste the following URL into your listening software:

http://content.thisis.co.uk/podcasts/linford/linfords-week-in-politics.rss