A Better Ambition by Tim Farron

Author:Tim Farron [Farron Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780281083602
Publisher: SPCK

7

Langley Park . . .

In the first week of July 2013, about ten of us gathered at Wainwright House, a hotel in Kendal owned by a friend. We’d been out for a meal the night before and we sat outside in the spacious garden with flip charts, marker pens and post-it notes for an event that had been in the diary for a few weeks, enigmatically entitled ‘Langley Park’.

From Langley Park to Memphis is Prefab Sprout’s third album (some would say fourth because Protest Songs was recorded before From Langley Park to Memphis but was released afterwards. You’re glad you know this, aren’t you?). Prefab Sprout are my favourite band. To call them an 80s indie act doesn’t do them justice, but the NME once described them as ‘the Smiths for people with A levels’. Lyrically and musically sublime, they had the cleverest lyrics (‘words are trains for moving past what really has no name’) and transcendent melodies. I fell in love with them the first time I heard the track ‘Appetite’ on the radio in 1985. My mum bought me their second album Steve McQueen for Christmas in 1985 and I’ve never looked back. That original vinyl copy of Steve McQueen remains my most treasured material possession.

So when I was asked by Kiran Horwich, my researcher at the time, what she should put in the diary to describe this ‘thing’, I thought it a wonderful opportunity for self-indulgence and began the process of thinking my way through the entire Prefab Sprout canon, settling on ‘Langley Park’ mostly because it sounded more innocuous than ‘Swoon’, ‘Steve McQueen’, ‘Andromeda Heights’, ‘Protest Songs’, ‘Let’s Change the World with Music’, ‘Jordan: The Comeback’ or ‘The Gunman and Other Stories’ (Crimson Red hadn’t come out at that stage)!

So what was ‘the thing’ that necessitated an enigmatic code name in the diary? It was, of course, my embryonic campaign to be the next party Leader.

That first al fresco gathering of the Langley Park group in the Kendal sunshine was chaired by Ben Rich. Ben is one of my oldest friends in politics. I first met him when I ran successfully for the National Union of Students’ National Executive Council. I was the first Lib Dem ever elected to that role, and Ben, as my campaign manager, was a major part of that achievement. Ben’s a fixer, a networker, a strategist – and most importantly he’s a loyal friend. We’d remained so over the years and met again for a coffee in the café overlooking Waterloo Station concourse in May 2013. I’d come to the conclusion that when the leadership became vacant, I wanted to be in a position to be a serious runner even if – in the end – I decided not to enter the contest. So, in the coffee shop at Waterloo we decided that it was better to plan for something that might not happen than to not plan for something that might. Langley Park was born.

There were ten of us gathered together that weekend in Kendal.

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