Sean O'Grady: The dream of power still keeps Ming running

I can still recall the scene. We were gathered in the meeting room in the cramped suite allocated to the leader of the Liberal Democrats. Paddy Ashdown had brought his closest advisers together. We were all in on "the project", the secret plan to get Liberal Democrats into the Labour government. Ashdown declared that he would be joining Blair's administration in a week. Two Liberal Democrats, maybe three, would be joining the cabinet. We were going to be in power for the first time since Lloyd George. We had already joined a cabinet committee. But Cabinet itself! What a prize!

Eyes peered down at shoes, Liberal throats were cleared, Liberal consciences examined. There were dangers, some said. Risks to party unity. Wouldn't we be Blair's prisoners? What would the new government's policies be? The atmosphere sagged. Power obviously didn't excite these Lib Dems; it frightened them.

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Except for one. You could almost taste Ming Campbell's contempt for his colleagues. This was a time for loyalty, he told them; Paddy had brought us so far that we ought to give him our trust. It was a lonely act of fealty. If anything, I thought Campbell was even more keen on a deal with Blair than Ashdown was. Campbell was perfectly happy to countenance leaving behind a ruptured party if that was the price of office.

It all turned to dust, but I think the dream of power still keeps Ming running. After all, he got the leadership when everyone had written him off - why not, he must wonder to himself, a post in Cabinet?

So it came as no great surprise to learn that Ming and Gordon Brown have been having confidential chats. The claims about Liberal Democrats joining a Brown government have been flatly denied, but they do have a ring of truth to them. When Ashdown's project finally collapsed in 1999, and the Lib-Dems turned nasty over Iraq under Charles Kennedy, it looked as though the project was a bit of a dead parrot. But Ming obviously seems willing to give it the kiss of life.

I can see why, in a way. The old rationale is still there - the Lib Dems being squeezed in the centre, this time by the Tories as well. More recently, there's been a certain amount of policy convergence - the project by stealth, if you like - on income tax and the like. There's Iraq, and civil liberties, but they will lose their bitterness and salience. There's also a question of timing. Given that a Lib Dem/ Labour arrangement is on the way anyhow, why not make the most of the inevitable and start to prepare the ground for it as a "coalition of principle", rather than one of expediency?

It's all fine, I suppose, except that if the Liberal Democrats become associated with Labour next time they will be crushed. David Cameron is even now peeling back those "soft Tory" voters who the Lib-Dems captured back in the 1990s. They are happy to vote Lib Dem as a sort of protest, but much less happy about voting for a Brown stooge. "Vote Campbell, Get Brown" is a powerful Tory slogan.

There's also the small matter of Brown's role. If Brown really is interested in dealing seriously with the Lib Dems, that is sharply at odds with how he behaved before. According to The Ashdown Diaries, the Lib Dems initially received a warm(ish) response from the Chancellor. In December 1997, for example, Ashdown recounts: "I went on to explain to him [Brown] how I saw 'the project': the bringing together of the two progressive forces of British politics; the need for action now... 'I really want to stress that this is where I believe we can get to... Tell me bluntly, are you prepared to see us in government with you? Or is that something you would oppose?' GB: 'No, of course I want you to be in the project with us, It's the only sensible solution. And we need to get there as soon as we can.'"

It didn't happen that fast. In March 1999, Ashdown got a call to go to see Brown at the Treasury. After some pleasantries, Brown told Ashdown that he had a job for him. This is how the diary entry runs:

"Brown asked me whether I would be prepared to head up a small team looking into Customs and Excise and the whole question of cigarette smuggling, which was costing the Exchequer a billion a year. They needed someone who knew their way round undercover operations... He made a point of saying that it was his idea not Blair's..."

Quite; I bet even Blair wouldn't have dreamt up anything quite as humiliating as that. So unless Sir Ming fancies hanging around in pubs waiting for someone to sell him a cheap packet of fags, I'd be careful of Mr Brown's overtures. It certainly isn't worth splitting the party over 20 Silk Cut.

The writer was press secretary to Paddy Ashdown in 1997