Saturday 8 May 2010

Evan Worse

I'm going to put this on the website, as it refers to the O.U. Lib Dems, but it's relevant here too:

I find myself today in the unusual position of feeling I must defend erstwhile OULD election supremo and MP for Oxford West Dr Evan Harris. As has been recently alluded to elsewhere, it is no secret among some that in those far-off days of the fallout from the merger of the Liberals and the SDP, when we were both involved in Oxford student politics, I and the Dr found ourselves adversaries in certain matters. At this distance I can judge it all as involving questions of style rather than real principle although it seemed terribly important at the time, as student politics often does. Evan was, we found, incredibly difficult to work with, and after he won OxWAb in 1997 I concluded (and was not shy of saying) that he was doing less damage and more good as a backbench Liberal Democrat MP than he’d done at any stage of his political career hitherto. When Charles Kennedy appointed him Party spokesperson on women’s rights it even provided some laughs, which I suspect Good-Time Charlie fully intended it should.

Evan gradually became more and more concerned with secularism, assisted dying, and other such issues. As I underwent a parallel and opposite movement of becoming an orthodox-minded Christian and eventually an Anglican priest, I couldn’t be expected to sympathise much with this, but I curiously respected it. At Oxford Evan talked very little about ideas or beliefs. He did have something of a narrative of what had led him into politics, involving growing up in Liverpool and observing the incompetence and neglect of the city at the hands of the Labour Party, but that was as far as it went. Yet his secularist stance was something he pursued despite strong opposition and which won him few friends; one can only conclude that he actually believes it. I have no idea what led Evan to follow this line, and it would be interesting to find out; it certainly wasn’t anything he ever talked about at Oxford.

On Thursday Evan lost his parliamentary seat to the Conservatives, apparently as a result of boundary changes, by a tantalising 176 votes; once upon a time I might have nursed a touch of schadenfreude, but that’s long past. It’s the way things work in UK politics – but there was an extraordinarily fatuous and vitriolic column by George Pitcher in the Telegraph crowing over the Dr’s defenestration. ‘Revd’ Pitcher places Evan Harris’s title in quotation marks, as though he isn’t qualified to practice medicine at all - see how offensive it looks when I do it? – describes him as ‘a stranger to principle’, and alleges that his election as an MP was simply a convenience to allow him to pursue his campaign on behalf of the National Secular Society. As I say, I don’t recall Evan saying anything about secularism until long after his election; something unknown has happened to him to convince him about it. But then George Pitcher doesn’t know anything about Evan. I don’t agree with Dr Harris, never have done really, but I can only see someone who has grown as a result of his experience of public office and, probably, working in the medical profession as opposed to simply shoving leaflets under students’ doors. I suppose I’m the naïve one for expecting better from a priest.

4 comments:

  1. Well said James.

    That said, I think Evan would have retained his seat by a whisker instead of losing it by one had he been better at correspondence. Apparently all too many people said on the doorstep "I wrote to him, but he never wrote back". And bizarrely he was very reluctant to get out and canvas. The Oxford team wanted a bit more of the old Evan back, the one who would work 24/7 on the little things. Without a "natural" majority, LD MPs do have to work consistently hard to retain their seats, and the Tories put a lot of work in to unseat him.

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  2. Yes, well as I say it's a bizarre position for me to be in, but I think a person's ideas should be argued against rather than their character assaulted by people who know absolutely nothing about him. I've had plenty of problems with Evan but oddly have only really begun to find much respect for him *since* he took up a cause I disagree with - it was, after all, a cause. Your account of what actually happened in Oxford is interesting: I'd've thought Evan not responding to letters is exactly like the 'old Evan' I recall, taking on about three times the number of things he actually stood any chance of doing. As I write someone is speculating on the radio that the Lib Dems put too much effort into Oxford East because they thought OxWAb was in the bag. And I always HATED canvassing so can't have a go at anyone else! I suppose had I been an MP though ...

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  4. from afar, it sounds like the premature death of his girl friend may have mellowed him out. a 176 majority reminds me of b&r.

    how does it feel for you gentlemen to be part of the ruling party?

    h-

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