Comment: A battle too far for Paddy

PADDY ASHDOWN has been a very impatient man. Not for nothing was one of his more enduring nicknames "Tigger". And typically Paddy is as fond of his jogging as most politicians are of life's softer pleasures. As a result, those of us who worked for him found him extremely difficult to keep up with, physically and intellectually. Indeed, his liking for the Somerset countryside, and a brisk walk as we discussed the challenges facing the party, ruined at least one pair of perfectly good shoes of mine. But as he looks forward to an easier pace of life, he can reflect that he lived up to almost all of the political challenges placed in his path, and brought himself and his party closer to power than any previous leader since Lloyd George, is more than sufficient to secure his place in history. The achievement of influence through the joint Cabinet committee with the Government on first constitutional, and later foreign affairs, was something that his immediate predecessors could only dream about.

That Paddy is retiring because he feels he has achieved all he can for his party is sad, but to me, not so startling. Ten years is probably enough, as David Steel suggested in an article for this paper to mark Paddy's decade as leader. Although I only worked with him for a very short time, I quickly found that Paddy Ashdown was a man who would always have to have something to run for. I think that he has run out of things to run for, despite his recent close personal relationship with Tony Blair. Having a project to run at was what made him tick, politically.

When he was a soldier he had battles to fight and wars to win. He tells a good tale about some of these. He wandered into politics - convinced, he always said, by an odd little Liberal man in an anorak who turned up on his doorstep in 1971 and who wanted to talk to him about "community politics". Not his type, you would think, but he soon got used to the men in sandals, and his earlier flirtation with the Labour Party was finally extinguished. His next aim was to secure a seat and win it. He turned up in Yeovil, partly through family connections of his wife Jane's, and after a pot at it in 1979, went on to win in 1983, securing the largest swing against the Conservative Party in the country. The seat was in the West Country, with some Liberal tradition. But the scale of the turnaround that Paddy achieved was down to a certain force of personality. After he became leader he inherited a party that couldn't even decide on its own name ("Democrats" was his own preference, one of the few mistakes, he joked, that he was ashamed to own up to).

Politically his first task - another thing to run for - was to finish off the other two political minnows he found himself in competition with. Despite the occasional overture, Dr David Owen's "continuing SDP", little more than a fan club for the Doc, proved for a short while an effective and irritating distraction. Trickier to deal with were the Greens, who were in fact grabbing part of the old Liberal appeal to environmentalism. They too were seen off. The 1992 election was a staging post, a chance to prove that the party could, more or less, hold its own, which it did. Another project completed.

But the political challenge which most tested Ashdown, and which he tried turning to his advantage, was in the shape of that new kid on the block Tony Blair, who became Labour leader in 1994.

Blair challenged Paddy's monopoly for freshness and energy when he became Labour leader in 1994. Coming to terms with a "younger man" was not going to be easy. More significant though, was the political sublimation of Blair. Rightly or wrongly, Paddy came to the view that Blair was, in fact, "one of us". That is that Blair, in his unideological, pragmatic, progressive, modernising way was in fact a Liberal, albeit in the loosest sense of the word. Or at least that he had the potential so to become. It was a judgement that many in his own party would find difficult to accept. The thing that Paddy Ashdown began to run for now was power. Having weaned his party off "equidistance" between Labour and the Tories, he began running for office. The convergence between the two parties, halting and untidy, might accommodate that ambition.

It might have been possible, say in a hung parliament or some other politically surprising situation, to have hoped realistically for a place in government. This would be on principle, as he always said to do something rather than be something. For whatever reason, such a moment has now, probably, passed (although constitutionalists will point out that you can be a minister and not leader of the Lib Dems).

True, the Cabinet Committee offered much opportunity for influence. But the essential task - of setting it up and making it work - is done.

My guess is that as he yomped with his beloved pet mongrel, Luke, around the hills near his home he reflected on what the next few years offered him, and found less than usual to run for. Paddy sometimes confided that he found too much of his time occupied by fairly pointless ritual, a piece of constitutional wallpaper, turning up to things for reasons of protocol. If he had ever made it to the Foreign Office, he would have found such duties irksome. Another four or five years as leader of the Lib Dems, struggling for attention, often ignored, and without the prospect of power, it all rather palled.

In many ways Paddy Ashdown will play Neil Kinnock to his successor's Tony Blair. In other words he will have done much, even most, of the hard work on changing his party, but will be unable to reap the final reward. Most significant, he will not be around to see the dream realised. When it does come, we will witness what Paddy always sloganised as "the new politics". He will bequeath to his successor an impressive legacy (although not one without its debts and problems). He has done an enormous amount to achieve the big thing he was running for - the historic reconciliation between the progressive parties of the "centre-left". But he read too much, perhaps, into Tony Blair's liberalism, which is not as thoroughgoing or unequivocal as he thought. It is a little wishful, or possibly ironic, to place Blair in a line with Gladstone, Lloyd George or Keynes. He also, if this does not sound too bizarre, placed a little too much faith in the intentions of one man, even if he is the Prime Minister. It was apparent to me that not everyone in Government was as enthusiastic about our habit of working together as their leader was. Many had rather tribal instincts.

Paddy will miss the Party. He genuinely (and in stark contrast to Lord Steel) retained a sympathy with the party's grass roots that few other political leaders could boast after 10 years at the top. His party was sometimes suspicious of him but always had that nagging doubt that Paddy had been right before. He did have strategic sense. He loved policy.

Paddy will not, however, miss the House of Commons. He did not choose parliamentarians, on the whole, for his friends and was not the "clubbable" type. He had little time for the traditions and flummery that seem to enchant so many others. I suspect he also felt bad about the deliberate disrespect MPs showed at Prime Minister's Questions, but he certainly did not show it.

Paddy would have made an ideal Foreign or Defence minister, his background and knowledge perfectly suited to the task. Whether Paddy and Jane would relish taking up the life abroad again is a more moot point. At all events, he will spend more time with his family, and may even write his memoirs. They will be an exciting tale.

The author was head of Paddy Ashdown's office, 1997-1998