Last of the big guns: Alistair Carmichael on challenging times for his party and himself

It was just after 10pm and the British electoral landscape was about to be turned on its head. An exit poll released shortly after voting ended had suggested David Cameron was on course to remain Prime Minister as head of a minority Conservative government, albeit without the need for a coalition, as had widely been forecast.

His former coalition partners were tipped for a much more ominous fate though, diminished in number from 57 to just 10 MPs. Sitting opposite the BBC’s Andrew Neil, former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown struck a defiant tone. “If this exit poll is right Andrew, I will publicly eat my hat on your programme.”

Twitter soon went into meltdown, with a mock account, ‘Paddy Ashdown’s Hat’, attracting thousands of followers before the election counts were even broadcast. However, within hours of Ashdown’s renowned one-liner, it became clear that the poll had proved inaccurate – it had been too generous.

“I was fortunate not to be faced with it in a television studio so my wardrobe remained unchewed by the end of the night,” jokes Orkney and Shetland MP Alistair Carmichael, one of eight Liberal Democrats to survive. His own majority, which had more or less trebled between first being elected in 2001 and his last campaign in 2010, had been reduced to a meagre 817 – still highly impressive, though, in the context of the SNP landslide throughout Scotland.

“When I delivered the speech at the declaration at the Clickimin Centre at about 4am, we had pretty good intelligence from the counts in our own held seats and it was pretty clear by that time that I was going to be the only Liberal Democrat MP and that there were Labour seats falling like ninepins all over the country, although we had patchier intelligence on that,” he tells Holyrood.

“I was told that Ian Murray was ahead and then I was told that he was behind. I was told the same thing about David Mundell, and I think I was maybe told that the Tories had been ahead in the Borders and then they were behind. So when I made the speech at the declaration, it was possible that I was going to be the only non-SNP MP in Scotland. It turned out not to be quite the case, but it was quite a daunting prospect, shall we say.”

It’s a Tuesday morning in Carmichael’s Shetland constituency office. The 50-year-old, who lives in Orkney, is up for the week while his Holyrood counterpart, Tavish Scott, is spending time with family. With a wife and two sons – one 14, the other 18 – plus previous responsibilities, first as Lib Dem chief whip then Secretary of State for Scotland, the opportunity that summer recess provides to spend a few days on the trot in Shetland is one Carmichael intends to make the most of.

There is, of course, the elephant in the room that he does not want to talk about in much detail – nor is it considered wise, from a legal standpoint, to do so, four weeks’ out from a petition challenging his re-election being heard at a special election court at the Court of Session. News cameras were in court 1 earlier this month as four of his constituents claimed he authorised a leaked memo suggesting Nicola Sturgeon would prefer Cameron to remain in Downing Street to influence the outcome of May’s vote. Carmichael wasn’t in court.

“Yes, [I’ve had a] lot of support,” he says. “Obviously, it’s not universal – as you would expect. But I get a good stream of emails, phone calls, people just coming up in the streets, people at the agricultural shows, saying, ‘stick in there, we want to keep you’, and that’s what I am going to do... There are a few constituents who’ve told me that they [are disappointed], generally by email rather than to my face, and there are nationalists who are bringing this election petition. But, by and large, I am getting good support and I am happy with that.”

While the former Scottish Secretary’s political future hangs in the balance, his party’s seems undeniable. They face a completely transformed landscape, having gone from being a party of 56 in government to a party of eight in opposition. The changed circumstances necessitate a “more fleet-footed” approach within Westminster, according to Carmichael, an MP whose nine years on the opposition benches ahead of the Rose Garden pact should stand him in good stead. Indeed, the week in which the hearing date was announced for the legal challenge to his re-election, the former Scottish Secretary was hitting the headlines for more positive reasons.

Conservative ministers had been forced to come to the House of Commons to defend their plans to introduce English votes for English laws (EVEL) by amending standing orders rather than primary legislation. The embarrassing turn of events for the newly-elected Tory government was down to Carmichael, who secured an emergency three-hour debate thanks to the rarely used Standing Order 24. “If I hadn’t applied for and got that Standing Order 24 debate – and remember, I was the one that did it, the other 56 and the official opposition didn’t make that application. Because I did that, you exposed the weaknesses in the government case [and] you also were able to see the unhappiness that there was within the government’s own backbenches on it. And while it is not yet dead, the original intention of having a snap vote on a proposal to change standing orders two weeks after the initial proposals never actually happened.”

Carmichael offers up the example as a reminder that, though outnumbered, he still brings something to the table that an emboldened SNP fails to. Having seen the previous SNP group of six swell to 56, how has he found having many more of them sitting alongside him on the green benches in the Commons? 

“Mixed,” he says. “Some of them have really been carried away by their own hubris. Others are pretty instinctively collegiate characters that you will work with quite easily. And that was true also of the Labour Party, it has to be said; you just sort of made the relationships gradually over the years with them.

“My perception at the moment would be that they have a rigid discipline, absolutely iron discipline, and they are less likely to socialise with people of other parties. But they’re already understanding that there is some merit from cross-party working, you see them engaging in all-party groups and I think there will be a professional working relationship there. Look, Scottish politics is a small community as well, so there are people there that I have known for years, some I was at university with. Neil Gray, for example, was brought up in Orkney; I’ve known him since he was a schoolboy. So it’s not coming entirely cold to the relationship-building exercise.”

Have those relationships been strained given the context of a legal challenge, however? “Probably for some of them. But to go back to the Standing Order 24 debate, it didn’t stop them saying, ‘actually, that was really well done, you did a good job there’. The ones that would maybe feel affected would be less likely to be talking to you anyway.”

Of course, the result on 7 May could have been very different had the Lib Dems achieved electoral reform four years earlier. The No campaign won overwhelmingly, with more than double the number who backed the introduction of an Alternative Vote (AV) system opting against it. Looking back on five years in government – the first time Britain had had a coalition in 70 years – Carmichael suggests the route taken wasn’t the right one.

“I think the thing that I regret more than anything else was that we didn’t make more progress on constitutional reform. I really regret the fact that we didn’t get electoral reform of any sort and, as you can see now, the fact that reform of the House of Lords was effectively killed by a combination of Tory and Labour backbenchers. Yes, I think that’s probably the single biggest regret.

“With the benefit of hindsight, you can see that [a referendum on AV] maybe wasn’t the best way to get to electoral reform, meaning that it was a system that actually nobody had really wanted and to get through a referendum a year into a coalition government that was cutting public spending [was going to be difficult]. But, you know, that’s the benefit of hindsight, that’s wise looking back.

“I think we should have probably gone for STV (Single Transferable Vote) and I don’t know that it should have been a referendum. We changed the voting system in Scotland without a referendum, we’ve changed it for European elections without a referendum, we’ve changed it for local government in Scotland without a referendum – there is plenty of precedent.”

In fact, Carmichael would like to see a “unified” electoral system in place throughout the UK “instead of the different mish-mash that you’ve got”. 

“My preference would be to see Single Transferable Vote used everywhere,” he adds. That is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Reform of the House of Lords, however, could be more credible after the second chamber was plunged into further controversy over the summer break.

Lord Sewel, who stood for the Scottish Parliament in 1999, resigned from the Lords after being filmed allegedly taking cocaine at his London flat in the company of prostitutes. Given the crossbench peer was responsible for enforcing standards in the Lords, calls for wider action beyond his ignominious exit were to be expected. The SNP, which does not take any seats in the Lords on principle, wasted no time in turning the spotlight on new Lib Dem leader Tim Farron and the then four Labour leadership candidates, calling on them to rule out appointing new peers.

“What would be achieved by not appointing peers to the House of Lords?” asks Carmichael, whose party was last month given 11 peerages, taking their total to 14 times their number of MPs. “Absolutely nothing. What do the SNP achieve by not appointing peers to the House of Lords? Does it bring reform any closer? No, of course it doesn’t.”

It undoubtedly leaves the party open to claims of hypocrisy though, especially after Farron labelled the system “rotten to the core” in the aftermath of Lord Sewel’s resignation. “That is talking about the need for reform,” says Carmichael.

“But you can’t ignore the fact that there is still a lot of important work to be done by the House of Lords, that a lot of the work that our peers do is enormously important in terms of revising and making the government think again, and yes it needs reform but until it is reformed it is an important part of our political and constitutional architecture and any mature political party should accept that and get on with it.”

In essence, then, play the system? “That’s what the system is there for.”

While the Northern Isles MP anticipates a “forward-looking” autumn conference when the party – now under Farron’s leadership after beating Norman Lamb to replace Nick Clegg – meets in Bournemouth, there will undoubtedly be a moment to mark the absence of a familiar face. Carmichael had been woken around 6am on 2 June by a phone call from a senior Lib Dem staffer telling him that Charles Kennedy had died suddenly at his home in Fort William. In the days that followed, it emerged that the former Lib Dem leader – who lost his Ross, Skye and Lochaber seat of 32 years to the SNP the month before – had died of a major haemorrhage linked to alcoholism.

“I hadn’t actually seen him since the dissolution of parliament,” says Carmichael, who talks of a “numb sense of shock” on hearing the news. “But I had – and this was not always how Charles worked – I had quite a lot of text contact with him during the campaign, just sort of comparing notes and bruises because he was finding it a thoroughly unpleasant campaign to be part of it, we all were.

"There was a lot of really unpleasant stuff being put out there and the nationalists in each constituency would target it against individual MPs – but it was the same material being used, replicated from seat to seat; stuff on blogs saying that we had voted to block investigations into historic paedophilia cases and that sort of stuff. Untrue and unpleasant, but it’s part of politics in the age of social media.”

Kennedy’s former wife, Sarah Gurling, and their 10-year-old son Donald were in the House of Commons two days after his death to hear warm tributes paid to him from across the political divide. “I think probably more than an individual moment, I have a sort of enduring impression and it was of somebody who was a warm personality, very good company, but an interesting mix of the gregarious and the shy,” Carmichael tells Holyrood.

“You know, he took quite a bit of getting to know but when you did get to know him, there was a very acute political brain in there. I don’t smoke but he did, and I think my memory will generally be standing outside places having a chat with him as he puffed away giving whatever the analysis of the issue of the day was.”

According to Carmichael, Holyrood would have “benefited enormously” had Kennedy taken up Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie’s offer to stand for the Scottish Parliament. Of course, with polls forecasting another SNP landslide, winning a seat would have been a considerable challenge in itself.

“The health service is teetering on the brink, the education system has enormous problems, the criminal justice system has been completely trashed; you have a single police force which tries to implement uniform – forgive the pun – policing priorities across the whole of Scotland and which is now virtually unaccountable and almost dysfunctional, but yet the approval ratings, the support for the SNP, continues to rise. Let’s just see if that remains the case. It will change eventually. Sooner or later, the normal laws of politics and political gravity must start to apply again. Don’t ask me when.”

When, I ask. “I’ve no idea,” he answers with a nervous laugh.

Despite backing former health minister Norman Lamb in July, Carmichael says he is “quite happy” to have Farron as Lib Dem leader, a figure, I suggest, who carries less baggage than his predecessor. “Baggage is a slightly pejorative term,” counters Carmichael. “But he has the opportunity to establish himself in the public mind in his own terms whereas Nick, by virtue of the fact he was Deputy Prime Minister, was defined in most people’s minds.”

With Corbynmania at its height when Carmichael sits down with Holyrood, would he not rather have someone like the left-wing MP in his corner? “I like Jeremy, I’ve worked with him in the years I’ve been in the House of Commons on a number of different things. I find him a warm, sincere and thoughtful politician. I just don’t think he would thrive as leader of the opposition. I might be wrong about that, but I just don’t see it happening.” The former chief whip in him certainly wouldn’t warm to the Islington North MP. “I don’t think I would ever, as chief whip, have wanted to be chief whip for Jeremy Corbyn,” laughs Carmichael.

As for his own party leader, the job undoubtedly calls for a different style of politics given the number of MPs and the machinery that comes with it has been severely weakened. “I think we’re still very clear in our own minds who we are and what we stand for, but in the public consciousness – and having been defined by the media rather than defining ourselves – that became blurred in the years of coalition and that’s where we need to now get back out there, and we’ve got a job of rebuilding to do.” Farron has a “good and growing narrative” in light of decisions taken by the Tories on the likes of immigration, welfare reform and human rights since losing their Lib Dem partners, argues Carmichael.

Election results, though, are what counts and it is the one thing the party has been unable to buy these past five years. A year on from entering government, their parliamentary cohort at Holyrood was decimated by two-thirds from 16 MSPs to five. A year later, more than half of the Lib Dem councillors in Scotland were forced to acknowledge defeat, one even facing the embarrassment of finishing behind an independent candidate dressed in a penguin suit. Then last year, the party’s worst European election result for 25 years saw the Lib Dems lose all but one of its 12 MEPs. There doesn’t seem much further to fall.

“Are you going to start singing D:Ream ‘Things Can Only Get Better’?” interjects Carmichael. Could it be the party’s theme tune for May 2016? “Well, no, I think it has certain associations with [Tony] Blair that I wouldn’t particularly want to invite,” he says. “Look, I believe that we will [perform better] but I also believe that we will as long as we go out and make the case and demonstrate our relevance and tackle it with focus and determination – it’s not just going to happen.

"I think in many ways part of the reason why Scottish politics has reached the point that it has today is that many in the Labour Party and, perhaps, some in my own looked at the results in 2007 and 2011 and said, ‘well, you know, that’s got to be the high water mark, hasn’t it?’ And that’s not necessarily the case.”

Given the events of the past month or so across Europe, Carmichael will be kept busy after Farron handed him the home affairs brief. One of Farron’s first pronouncements as leader was to declare that Carmichael deserved a second chance over his part in the leaking of a memo about the First Minister. “I was very grateful for it,” he says when asked about this public backing. “You would have to ask Tim, he obviously felt it was important enough for him to say it.”

Does he accept, however, that part of his constituency will not be so forgiving? “I’ve said all I’ve really got to say about this. You know, it’s out there, I have apologised for what I did, I have apologised to my constituents more than anything else, and I’ve said there are some whose trust I need to win back and I will do that by doing the job that I have done for the last 14 years and which I think I have been able to demonstrate in recent weeks that I am still capable of doing and doing well. Scotland needs liberal voices.”

Whether Carmichael’s will continue to be one of them is now in the hands of two judges.