How West Dorset MP Oliver Letwin is shaping Britain’s future

WEST DORSET MP Oliver Letwin is one of the top Conservatives negotiating with the Liberal Democrats over the shape of the next Government.

As this is a piece of political history in the making, it is worth recording Dr Letwin’s role.

He wouldn’t, after all, still be an MP if the people of West Dorset hadn’t re-elected him.

So, here you will find some details, culled from various sources, about what is going on. If you are able to contribute more information, please do.

This is a work in progress!

Tuesday, May 4: Dr Letwin speaks at Loders Village Hall. He tells a questioner that there are areas of agreement between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, in, for example, education. But he doesn’t wish to dwell on those too much because an election is about disagreements; it’s about offering people a choice. “There’s no point us going round strenuously agreeing with one another because then we’re not offering people a choice.”

Thursday, May 6: Dr Letwin re-elected in West Dorset with an increased majority. There is bad feeling between some of his supporters and the Liberal Democrats. One complains to me, for example, about the vandalising of 50 or so Conservative signs (with, among other things, words like ‘Nazi’ and ‘Tw*t’). The Conservatives say the main culprit was from Honiton in Devon.

Friday, May 7: Early hours. Dr Letwin makes his victory speech at the election count in Dorchester. You can see video here on this site (kindly supplied by Alistair Nisbet). His Liberal Democrat opponent Dr Sue Farrant speaks next. As she starts to speak, some Conservatives turn away. Two onlookers have remarked to me about what they see as the rudeness of this behaviour.

Dr Letwin hangs around waiting to be interviewed on national TV. This doesn’t happen. He says he can’t wait any more, he has to go to London, and he does indeed head off to the Conservatives war-room, to try to make sense of what’s going on nationally.

The Times now takes up the story:

- Mr Cameron sat with Ed Llewellyn, his chief of staff, and Oliver Letwin — back from his own count in Dorset — gaming the possible scenarios. As dawn began to break, and some time before [George] Osborne’s arrival from Cheshire at 6am, the last hopes of a clear win were dashed. “You could see him totting them up in his head,” said an observer. “You could see him realise that we weren’t going to make it.”

- Ever pragmatic, the Tory leader suggested that his key team “get some kip” and reconvene a couple of hours later. The same tight-knit group that had hoped by now to be in No 10 set about plotting how it could winkle Gordon Brown out.

Senior Conservatives meet again. As The Guardian reports, Dr Letwin, William Hague and George Osborne are the Tory team chosen to negotiate with Liberal Democrats including the Yeovil MP David Laws.

2.30pm, Friday May 7: As David Cameron makes a speech at St. Stephen’s Club in Westminster offering to work with the Lib Dems, Oliver Letwin sits in the front row, wearing a red tie. You can see pictures of Dr Letwin leaving the venue in Westminster by clicking on this link.

Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg speak briefly on the phone, then their two teams have a longer exploratory meeting at the Cabinet Office, lasting just over an hour.

Saturday, May 8: Rumbles of disquiet from Tory MPs and activists (not generally fans of the Lib Dems, remember) start to be heard about Dr Letwin.

Iain Martin is Deputy Editor for the Wall Street Journal Europe. This paragraph is from his blog:

- I am hearing extraordinary stories about the way in which the Tory leadership has put together its coalition offer. After a degree of initial shock stunning people almost into silence, I’m picking up great bubbling anger about the whole business. (On Cameron’s strategy, the role of Oliver Letwin and Steve Hilton, the floating of talks on voting reform, etc.)

There is, in short, much more to come on this.

The Mirror says that a deal will possibly be done by Tuesday. It has a good primer on the places and politicians involved, the civil servants and the role of the Queen. It lists

- For Cameron: George Osborne, Oliver Letwin, long-time pal Tory chief executive Andrew Feldman and head of communications Andy Coulson.

Conservative and Liberal Democrat teams are to meet for a second time on Sunday morning, at 11am in the Cabinet Office. Some reports of the Tory team (in, for example, the MailOnline and The Clare Herald) now list the Tory negotiators as Hague, Osborne, Letwin and David Cameron’s chief of staff Ed Llewellyn.

Saturday night: Call for Letwin to be sacked

A story in tomorrow’s Observer - posted on the Guardian website – suggests un-named Conservatives are turning on Dr Letwin for the part he played in the election campaign – he wrote the Tories’ manifesto - and for his idea of the Big Society (which is exemplified for him by West Dorset). Some lines from The Observer:

- Today, one senior frontbencher rounded on the Conservative leader, demanding that he sack key figures involved in the campaign, including the man who ran it, George Osborne, the shadow chancellor. The frontbencher said: “He ran his campaign from the back of his Jaguar with a smug, smarmy little clique – people like Osborne, [Oliver] Letwin and Michael Gove. He should get rid of all of them. The party will settle for nothing less.”

- Another senior and normally loyal Tory MP complained that Cameron’s big idea for the campaign – “the Big Society”, under which armies of volunteers would come together to tackle the country’s ills – was “complete crap”.

Margaret Morrissey OBE, the Dorchester-based mastermind of Parents Outloud, springs to Oliver’s defence on Twitter:

morrisseyobe @RealWestDorset This is so out of order who is calling for it. Whatever his politics in 50 years of voting he is the best constit MP

Sunday, May 9: Returning to the issue of going on the attack, Matthew d’Ancona in The Sunday Telegraph writes:

- The speed and ferocity with which some Tories have attacked the Lib-Con talks say more about them than about Cameron. Opposition teaches bad habits, the habits of shrillness, fixity and sulking.

Cabinet Office, 10.56am: Dr Letwin, clutching an assortment of blue folders, moves through a scrum of journalists on his way to continue negotiations with the Liberal Democrats. George Osborne and William Hague don’t seem to be carrying anything.

You can click on this link to see pictures.

Also note that today he’s not wearing a tie at all. But, it is Sunday.

Thousands of stories have now been written about Britain’s Hung Parliament, but few shed much more light on our man, who, as we have seen, is keeping his folders close to his chest.

A long piece in The Sunday Times about the events of the last few days describes him as “affable”; A.A. Gill in the same paper compares him to Stan Laurel (he was sitting next to the substantially-chunkier Eric Pickles at the time); while Channel 4 News thinks the Liberal Democrats will find Oliver Letwin’s presence encouraging.

- The former philosophy don, who was in Cambridge University’s Liberal Club, may calm jangling Lib Dem nerves. He is now viewed as a “progressive Conservative” although he is firmly to the right on economic policy.

It’s hard to disagree with the content analysis offered by Sadie Smith on the blog Left Foot Forward (although, like her, I think a piece by Nick Cohen in The Observer is excellent – it’s about the need to resist intimidation and patronage):

- The papers this Sunday are a pale reflection the kind of limbo-induced ennui that teenagers in Broken Britain must feel whilst whiling away the dead hours before they can get to the park bench and the Diamond White, as they attempt to fill the empty pages between now and, you know, something actually happening. For the sanity of the nation, we can only hope that Cameron and Clegg get their sh*t on, PDQ.

Afternoon; a tweet from the young West Dorset Liberal Democrat activist Kasch Wilder, who tells me he’s been ceaselessly watching Telly, waiting for real news.

@KaschWilder Over four hours in the cabinet office. There’s obv a deal happening.

But is there?

Letwin’s role at the table is to marry

The Guardian has just published a short profile of Oliver Letwin and the other main negotiators.

- Oliver Letwin: As one of the main authors of the election manifesto, Letwin’s role at the table is to marry the Tory and Lib Dem programmes. Letwin’s relatively low profile means that he is often overlooked. But he has been a central figure in Cameron’s inner circle since he became the first member of the shadow cabinet to support him for the Tory leadership in 2005. His main role over the past four years has been to co-ordinate Tory policy making.

- Yellow friendly rating: 3 stars

- Ambition rating: 1 star

Sunday evening: After nearly 7 hours, negotiators emerged.

A sketchwriter in The Daily Telegraph commented:

-When the negotiators at last emerged, they looked very much as if they were well on the way to doing a deal. Oliver Letwin, who is highly accomplished at holding productive conversations with people who do not agree with him about everything [Editor's Note: this is very true], seemed to be glowing with pleasure.

- Mr Letwin was not wearing a tie: a sign, perhaps, that the Cameroons are prepared to accommodate all reasonable Lib Dem demands, including a degree of informality which would have been unthinkable in the days of Harold Macmillan.

This excerpt is from the website Conservative Home:

- Mr Hague said that there had been “positive and productive discussions” on a whole range of issues, including political reform, the economy, reduction of the deficit, banking reform, civil liberties and the environment.

- He said that the teams would be meeting again in the next 24 hours, but that they had already agreed that economic stability and reduction of the deficit would be central to any agreement that might be made (Danny Alexander on behalf of the Lib Dems echoed this statement virtually word for word ten minutes later on leaving the building with his colleagues).

- Mr Hague, George Osborne, Oliver Letwin and Ed Llewellyn then headed to the Commons to report back to David Cameron who is in his office there, where he has separately made himself available to Conservative MPs wanting to discuss the matters in hand. It seems that any Tory MP is welcome to attend.

But The New Statesman points out how little we really know:

- We may never know what exactly went on in today’s epic meeting at the Cabinet Office between the Tory and Lib Dem negotiating teams, who have almost certainly been lectured by senior civil servants about a vow of silence.

A final word for now, from Kasch Wilder again on Twitter:

KaschWilder is pretty sure Oliver Letwin doesn’t sleep. West Dorset count didn’t end until 3.30am… he went straight to CCHQ lol and now negotiations

On which note, how’s this for a caption to a photograph, from ABC News in America:

- “Conservative party Policy Chief Oliver Letwin (L) works as an assistant closes the blinds on the windows of the office of party leader David Cameron following meetings with representatives of the Liberal Democrat party in central London on May 9, 2010.”

It’s dark outside, as you can see by clicking on this link. And they say that being an MP is not a full-time job…

Monday, May 10: Negotiations start again at 10am. Little more has emerged about what’s being said.

But Julian Glover, in The Guardian, says the two parties’ agendas do overlap.

- This runs beyond policy detail on education and civil liberties into ideology – to their attitude to the state and social democracy. They both believe in the primacy of the individual, not of government. The talks this weekend will not have seen two teams prowl the room like suspicious dogs, but a gathering of like-minded people wanting to make a deal work: the new politics, indeed.

Myself, I think there will have been some suspicious doggery, before OL began glowing with pleasure, but no one is letting on.

Asked by the Dorset Echo about the talks, Dr Letwin responds: “I unfortunately can’t say anything whatsoever about them. We are not saying anything until it’s the time to.”

But he does say that he’s hoping for a Cabinet post. As you’d expect from the Conservatives’ policy chief. But what on earth might it be?

Culture, media and sport? I’ve never had him down as much of a football man.

Communities and local government? That might suit the progenitor of “the Big Society” – or is the B S an idea we won’t be hearing much more about in the future?

The Tory team came out before 4pm. Dr Letwin is wearing his red tie again, and looks like he’s sleeping standing up: