My Lords debut – and a real life defining moment
I’VE been a politician a long time, and in and around politics as a journalist for even longer. Tot it all up and there’s more than 20 years of both asking – and being asked – tough questions.
In truth, I’ve never had an issue with public speaking. Yes, I get nerves – whether that was before curtain up on a school play or the time I vomited into a wastepaper bucket en route to the studio before presenting my first programme for Radio Scotland, but nerves can be good, keeping you vigilant, as long as you can push through them.
So it felt odd last week to get those pit of the stomach nerves again. In May, I stepped down from the Scottish parliament after a decade. It was a hard ten years in political terms – plenty of elections and campaigns – but also a good ten years where I felt I’d contributed and grown.
And, whatever you think of the architecture, Holyrood is a great working building. Both literally and metaphorically, I had learned how to get around it. Building relationships with other members, yes, but also with parliament staff.
Getting in with a couple of the canteen staff allowed me to borrow half a dozen big water jugs to use as cocktail pitchers for a do, while a friend of a friend who worked with Holyrood’s facilities management company helped sponsor transport and accommodation for kids from a deprived area of Manchester who got in touch with me to come up on a visit.
When I stood down as party leader, over two years ago now, I promised that I would finish my elected parliamentary term but not stand again, knowing that it would be a struggle to sit quietly on the back benches watching someone else take the wheel.
About a year after that announcement, I was (somewhat to my surprise) told that the nomination the Scottish Secretary had put forward for me to be appointed a peer, had passed all the various stages (including No 10’s big red pen). So, I would be leaving one parliament in May and joining another.
That’s why I found myself on Friday feeling those same nerves once again. I can’t even begin to count the number of speeches I’ve made in my life. Whether at campaign rallies, or staff leaving dos, party conferences or charity appeals, fundraisers, school visits, TV debates or parliamentary question time, I’m pretty happy jumping up on my hind legs and saying a few words.
But I’d be lying if I said there weren’t a few butterflies when making my maiden speech in the House of Lords. It is a hugely imposing building. The raked seating, the ornate carving and the adversarial nature of dispatch boxes two sabre lengths apart are a world away from the modern amphitheatre of Holyrood.
A quick look around the chamber showed it was populated with proper political heavyweights. Since I joined, I’ve found myself in there sitting next to people like Michael Heseltine, David Trimble and Ken Clark – politicians I grew up watching on the nightly news.
When you join, you are warned not to speak on everything. With so much expertise drawn from across all strands of public life from science to business, medicine to the military (particularly from unaligned peers on the cross benches), the encouragement is to speak on issues you have a passion for or direct interest in. The first such topic to come up was Friday’s debate on assisted dying.
Difficult, complex and inspiring passions on all sides, it felt important. Any debate dissecting what it means to die, what it means to live, the agency of individuals and the parameters of the state will always encompass weighty themes. As a Private Members’ Bill on such a huge societal shift, the chances of it becoming law in short order are vanishingly small. But it is one of the national conversations we need to have, and a similar bill is being presented at Holyrood.
While this was my first time speaking in this chamber, it’s a subject I want to return to as that national conversation progresses. The toughest questions are the ones we ask of ourselves about what we really believe.