Wednesday 30 April 2008 3:23 pm
Tonight I had the pleasure of chairing a public Question Time with party leader Nick Clegg and Mayoral candidate Brian Paddick, here in Islington. Nick holds these 'town hall' meetings all over the country; they are open to anyone to come along and quiz him on any topic. We filled a lecture hall at London Met University (where I was a student 20 years ago....) and both Nick and Brian answered a wide range of questions from a mixed audience of journalists, pensioners, students and professionals.

There was no script but lots of questions; everything from asylum seekers to traffic calming, the state of the NHS to teacher recruitment and local experience of crime. Both of them spoke frankly and avoided bland answers. Brian said he'd be a constructive critic of the Metropolitan Police, pointing out that Ken Livingstone has failed to speak out over the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes or the appalling treatment of innocent muslims in Forest Gate. Nick rejected the idea of compulsory voting, saying that politicians have no right to punish the voters for their own failure to engage the electorate. Well, tonight's slice of the electorate was certainly engaged. It was good to hear people's issues first hand; if Ministers ever went out without their minders, we might all benefit.