Jeremy Browne looks more like a young subaltern preparing to go to India in 1860 than a typical Lib Dem. He stands ramrod straight, his reddish hair has an officer-class cut. He is always impeccably dressed. Whitehall gossip has it that when he was first appointed to the Foreign Office, the officials couldn’t believe that he was the Lib Dem. He is also, unlike many in his party, comfortable with being in power. ‘I don’t want Liberal Democrats to think we are having to endure these five years of government before we can breathe a sigh of relief, let our hair down and return to the relative comfort of opposition,’ he tells me.
When we meet in a drab Westminster interview room, Browne is in robust form. Being moved in the recent reshuffle from the Foreign Office to the Home Office has propelled him back into the domestic political fray and he is determined to take aim at those within his party who prefer ‘the comforts of powerlessness’ to governing.
Nick Clegg, he declares, is ‘the most successful Liberal leader since the second world war, more so than all the others combined’. Why? Because ‘all his predecessors didn’t implement a single Lib Dem idea’. Even the tuition fees question, which usually sends Lib Dems into a defensive crouch, draws an aggressive response: ‘People had a choice of voting for a party that didn’t want tuition fees and only 8 per cent of the constituencies in the country returned an MP from that party, so the people spoke and the people spoke very loudly and they said we want higher fees.’ I sense the Liberal Democrat special adviser sitting in on the interview flinching.
Browne admits that there have been times when both coalition parties have been more interested in blocking each other’s proposals than getting things done. He accepts that the move to government has not been easy for his party. ‘If you’ve been out of government for generations there is a process of transition, from getting up in the morning and thinking “how can we criticise the decision makers?” to getting up in the morning thinking “how can we make effective decisions in government?”’
His time as the Foreign Office minister dealing with the countries with the fastest-growing economies has radicalised Browne, already one of the most economically liberal people in the party. ‘A perfect storm’ is coming, he says. ‘We are at our weakest just at the point where the new competition is at its strongest.’ This realisation means that Browne is far more open to things like a new hub airport than any other Liberal Democrat.
In a sign of sensitivity around the coalition during the party conference season, two aides sit in on the interview. One is from Clegg’s office and watches what he says about his own party, and the other is from the Home Office, checking that he doesn’t say anything out of line with government policy. Under this watchful eye, Browne plays defensively to any question about coalition divisions. But it is clear that he would oppose the Tories exercising Britain’s opt-out from 130 EU crime and policing laws.
For Browne, the son of an ambassador, the transition to power has been smooth. But the Liberal Democrats’ future, and his, depends on how quickly the rest of the party catches up with him.