The LibDems’ 9 New Peers

The traditional British Dissolution Honours and new working peers’ list were announced today, with nine new peerages for the Liberal Democrats in toto, including three former MPs: Richard Allan, Matthew Taylor and Phil Willis.  The best-known name on the working peers’ list is Floella Benjamin, the Trinidadian-born author and TV presenter and Chancellor of the University of Exeter. She has been a star performer at recent LibDem conferences and events, as well as having a deep involvement with a number of charities, notably relating to children. She will be the LibDems’ frst black (as opposed to Asian) peer. Another ‘first’ is the Turkish-speaker Meral Ece, a former Islington councillor who is currently Chair of the Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats. The LibDems have been making great inroads into the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot communities in London and elsewhere recently, so her appointment will be particularly welcome there.

Sir Ken (now Lord) Macdonald was Director of Public Prosecutions in England and Wales from 2003 to 2006. He was an alumnus of my old college, St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and writes regularly for The Times. As a practising barrister, he works alongside Cherie Booth (aka Cherie  Blair) at Matrix, which hasn’t stopped him criticising Tony Blair’s ‘sycophancy towards power’. 

The other three new LibDem peers are all well-known in party circles. Mike German was leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats and one-time Deputy First Minister of Wales, while John Shipley has been a party stalwart in the North East of England, as a Councillor in Newcastle upon Tyne. Kate Parminter, former Chief Executive of the Council for the Protection of Rural England, also used to be a Councillor, in Horsham in West Sussex, and is currently a member of the LibDems’ Federal Executive.

Rugger Buggers, Rower Throwers and Hacks

  After a busy day of London engagements yesterday, I was able to board a much-delayed Oxford Tube bus for this year’s Philip Geddes Memorial function at my old college, St Edmund Hall, Oxford. The speaker at the lecture on ‘Whither journalism? The future of the press and new media’ was Lionel Barber, Editor of the Financial Times, who had some tart things to say about bloggers (sigh). I guess most of us in the business have concerns about issues of responsibility, the lack of editorial control and the anonymity of much blogging, though personally I feel the pluses outweigh the minuses. At dinner afterwards, I found myself sitting between Lionel and my fellow Aularian, Mark Field MP (Conservative, Cities of London and Westminster), while opposite was Sir Trevor McDonald, whose son is currently an undergraduate at the college. The Principal of Teddy Hall, Mike Mingos, deserves much credit for carving a niche for journalism at the college, of which the annual lecture is an important feature. Hackery had almost no academic status at Oxford when I was an undergraduate there, and I was viewed as being a very strange creature for having spent what would these days be called a gap year before going up to university reporting on the war in Vietnam.

Philip Geddes was a Teddy Hall graduate of some promise who worked briefly at the London Evening Standard and the Daily Express. In 1983, he was in Harrods in Knightsbridge when the store was evacuated in a bomb scare; he stayed to investigate and was killed by the blast of an explosive left by the IRA. The following year, a prize was established in his memory — actually two: £1000 for the most promising student journalist at Oxford University and a £500 award for a student at St Edmund Hall.

Leaving last night’s dinner, we were greeted by the familar sound of carousing in the buttery in the old quad. The admission of women (there were none in my day) does not seem to have dampened the spirits of this very sporty college. ‘Rugger Buggers’ were the hearties of 40 years ago, but now, reportedly, they are matched by ‘rower throwers’ — rowers who throw up after drinking too much beer. Plus ca change.

Link: www.seh.ox.ac.uk