Charles Kennedy at the
Lib Dems' morning press
conference. Photograph: Gareth
Fuller/PA
A rainy Monday morning in Smith Square, and the Liberal Democrats have chosen ID cards and crime as their topic of the day – topical in the light of the comments from the chief of the Metropolitan police, Ian Blair, who yesterday supported both identity cards and a new offence of acts preparatory to terrorism.
Charles Kennedy will spend the rest of the day in Orpington, Kent, talking to police officers, and Liverpool, where, as well as touring constituencies, he will be interviewed by Jeremy Paxman for Newsnight – screened at 7.30pm on BBC1.
Faced with the dilemma of how to "sell" opposition to something which one of Britain's leading police officers is now backing, Mr Kennedy tells reporters the Liberal Democrats would spend the saved money on 10,000 more police and 20,000 more community support officers.
"We would scrap Labour's flawed plan to charge people for their identity through compulsory national ID cards," he says. Like the Tories, the Lib Dems would create a border police, but they accuse the Conservatives of "flipflopping" on ID cards, even pulling out a quote from Tony Blair opposing Michael Howard on the issue when Mr Howard was home secretary in the mid-1990s.
7.40am: The quote Mr Kennedy – or, more likely, one of his researchers – has pulled out from Mr Blair is a real corker. "Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on compulsory ID cards, as the Tory right demand, let the money provide thousands of extra police officers on the beat in local communities."
"[Mr Blair] was right then, he is wrong now," says the Lib Dem leader.
"Ian Blair should tread carefully, and it's also my judgment that he's wrong," says the home affairs spokesman, Mark Oaten, boldly, suggesting that the Met chief would probably appreciate extra officers more than "a piece of plastic", and that in any case the cards are not yet intended to be compulsory.
Mr Kennedy holds forth on the campaign as a whole, saying the polls were now showing the Tories were "stuck", while his party was on the way up.
7.50am: Mr Kennedy backtracks to try to prevent a row between his party and the Met commissioner over ID cards. He tells reporters: "Anyone in such a responsible position in society has not just the right but a duty to be involved in issues ... but during a general election you have to tread with care."
The Lib Dem leader gets the best gag of the day after being asked why, if the Lib Dems are so opposed to ID cards on civil liberties grounds, all reporters had had to give their height to get a press pass for Lib Dem press conferences. "Because under the Lib Dems everyone walks tall," ripostes Mr Kennedy.
8am: With very little more to be said, Mr Kennedy wraps up for another day.
