ANOTHER VOICE

Want to be leader? Then what would you do about the following problems . . . ?

MATTHEW PARRIS

Iwent last week to watch a curiously old- fashioned event, in Oxford. The Liberal Democrat party has been scrutinising its candidates for the party leadership. Con- tenders in any other party would avoid giv- ing platforms to rival candidates, but the five would-be Liberal Democrat leaders Jackie Ballard, Malcolm Bruce, Simon Hughes, Charles Kennedy and David Ren- del — had good-naturedly joined the same travelling circus and flogged themselves around Britain, sharing a platform and answering the same questions so that audi- ences could compare and judge.

The 'Chilterns' hustings in Oxford was rather jolly. Hats off to the candidates for putting themselves through it. But sitting among the nice, faintly batty people who are still the backbone of this party, listening to each prepared, sometimes stilted and in all five cases rather old-fashioned speech, and following the earnest questions from the floor about things like voting systems, `cohabitation' with Labour and how to appeal to the younger generation, it all seemed a million miles from the territory in which the new leader will actually have to live and fight.

None of the skills a modern politico needs, none of the reflexes that betray a 21st-century survivor, was being tested here. Through occasions like this, the party might land itself with a leader whose out- standing ability was to shine on occasions like this. Modern British politics contrives few such occasions. Whoever wins this will probably never again have the undivided attention of a hall full of well-meaning and politically-informed people, every one of whom thinks politics matters, for nearly four hours. Liberal Democrats were not testing the aptitudes that count.

So, during a particularly long and intense answer from Simon Hughes about some- thing or other — Mr Hughes is always talk- ing about something or other and has strong views on the subject, which I can never quite recall — I amused myself by devising a New Millennium hustings for the party leader of tomorrow. Each candidate in turn would mount the rostrum and be ordered by the chairman to carry out the following tasks . . .

(1) Discreetly rubbish each of your rivals in a short (30 seconds maximum) quote, on the record. You are warned to avoid direct criticism or abuse, couching your attack in terms of an expression of warm support.

(2) Suggest a way of undermining each of your rivals by means of unattributable remarks intended for publication and placed in the mouths of friends or lieu- tenants.

(3) Deliver a short (three minutes maxi- mum) speech backing the Slaughter of the Firstborn Bill (2001), a measure which political advantage requires you to support.

(4) Deliver a similarly short speech defending your government's decision to abolish widows' benefit.

(5) It is 5 a.m. You have answered the door to two men who claim to be journal- ists from the Sunday People. They inform you that your teenage daughter, an under-. graduate at Durham, has been arrested in circumstances involving a rowing eight, a de-fanged python and a summer pudding. They ask for your reaction, assuring you that no other paper has the story and their intention — if you will co-operate — is to present the disclosure under 'other news' as no more than a foolish undergraduate prank, and you as a decent, baffled father.

(6) Your chief Treasury spokesman has shot his wife and gone to ground. You have called a press conference. Deliver an open- ing statement (four minutes maximum).

(7) Conduct, on the rostrum, a six-minute interview with a fictional interviewer, Mr John McPaxman. (The 'interviewer' is a computer-operated tape-recorder pro- grammed to start the interview by barking, `So, how are you going to dig yourself out of this latest hole, then?' and thereafter to interject into the slightest pause or hesita- tion, 'Oh come off it! That won't wash, will it?', 'How do you respond to those who will say you're simply failing to face up to this?' and 'Have you considered resigning?') (8) Deliver, off the cuff, a short, moving and eminently memorable tribute to a minor member of the royal family, whom you vaguely remember meeting (when you were both a little the worse for wear) at a Commonwealth Institute reception for a visiting Zambian delegation — and who has died unexpectedly.

(9) Handle a telephone call from Lady Z, the honorary president of an animal res- cue group with 1.5 million supporters, lob- bying you for a manifesto commitment to a trained corps within the ambulance service, dedicated to emergency treatment for injured pets. (10) You are invited to spend part of the summer recess at the palatial and delight- ful Catalan home of a long-standing friend of your wife's family. The children all want to go, and you need a rest. You know that a close relation of this family friend, often himself seen at the Catalan residence, has links with an obscure (but, according to Amnesty International, unsavoury) Saudi prince, whom he is in the habit of visiting in his private jet. Decide within three min- utes whether to accept. Defend your deci- sion (60 seconds maximum) on the Today programme.

(11) You have for years represented an old-fashioned but unstuffy rural seat. Your baggy tweeds and frayed collars are held in some affection there, and considered part of your charm. Now, as party leader, you are approached by an image consultant retained by the leader's office and told that your countrified shabbiness is a big turn-off with the youth vote and among young urban professionals. A make-over, a num- ber-three haircut and an Armani wardrobe are prescribed. Respond.

(12) On the campaign stump and while being filmed by a television crew, a friendly walkabout on a council estate turns sour when a slightly drunk old man with tattoos and a string vest lunges at you from the crowd and begins to shout abuse, poking you in the chest. React. (An actor will play your assailant's role.) (13) You are the leader of a third party. At the next election your party makes sub- stantial gains, but Tony Blair retains a clear, if reduced, overall majority. He invites you in for a congratulatory drink and offers you a Cabinet post (the Foreign Secretaryship is hinted at), but makes it plain that as the price for your co-opera- tion he can offer no public promises of any kind — though privately he tells you he hopes to move his own party towards a ref- erendum on proportional representation. Your last party conference has voted over- whelmingly against any deal that does not promise PR. But you have decided to accept Mr Blair's offer. A special party conference has been called, which you are about to address. Give them the news in a manner calculated to bring the conference cheering to its feet.

Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter and a columnist of the Times.