What made you join the liberal democrats?

What made you join the liberal democrats?

Andrew Phillips (Lord) gives expert video advice on: What first interested you in politics?; How did you begin your political career?; If you could have chosen any other career what would it have been? and more...

Well, as I say, I got expelled (rather careless of me, was it not?) in ‘73 when I was a Labor candidate up in North Norfolk. Basically, because I'm too stubborn and independent of view in a way that doesn't fit well with machine politics has developed. Perhaps that's an arrogant way of putting it, other people would say I'm just pigheaded. But I thought they were going completely the wrong way after the 1970 election and said so in print and that was my death-knell. So I thought I'd give politics a miss, but I was sucked back into it. One of the reasons I was chucked out of the Labor Party is I've never been a doctrinaire socialist. I've never believed in calls for nationalization, for example as a sort of end in itself and given that the “Lib Dems” have a long and distinguished record of progressive politics within what you might call a traditional framework, it was actually a natural home for me. The reason that I didn't go there originally was the reason that none of my generation went there, which is it seemed a no hope cause. They only had five MP's when I first started involvement; they've now got 65 MP's. So, that's the long and short of it.