"And then he said..."

We return to find our hero still in conversation with the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Menzies Campbell, following the Mingster's keynote speech last Thursday. Will he ask a difficult question or will he roll over and have his tummy tickled? Read on to find out…

So far, the three bloggers interviewing Ming had covered the leadership, Prime Minister's Questions, conviction politics vs management, the aspirant middle classes, the non-voting socially disadvantaged, the political sea-changes of 1979 and 1997, and the likelihood of a general election in Autumn 2007 if Gordon Brown gets an opinion poll bounce when he takes over. The atmosphere was conversational and informal, with some humour thrown in.

The mention of a possible election gave me the chance to ask about one of my current convictions: that the best way to deal with the Tory revival is to kneecap David Cameron. Puncture his bubble and the whole party slowly deflates. Unfortunately, half way through asking the question I realised I didn't actually know what the question was, beyond 'have we got a strategy to nobble Cameron?'

So that, shorn of all polite language and political subtlety, was essentially what I asked - although I did turn it into a joke about having seen Paddy Ashdown at the event earlier (for those not familiar with British politics in the 1990s, Ashdown is a former Lib Dem leader who used to be in the Special Forces: he's always carefully avoided denying lurid rumours that he'd killed with his bare hands).

I have to say that I was a bit disappointed with the answer - possibly because I'd managed to start the subject off with a laugh, preventing it from becoming the serious debate about political tactics I'd hoped for. Mea culpa.

We do have a strategy, as it happens. Our strategy is to pile pressure on the Tories if circumstances allow - the Bromley by-election is a case in point - but otherwise to sit back and watch while Cameron self-destructs under the weight of his own contradictions.

Ming said: “The shine is coming off. How he's going to get through 15 months without any policies I really can't imagine. If he tries to, I think he will begin to come under a lot of pressure.” He said this wouldn't just come from the media, it would also come from Tories with views similar to those on Conservative Home: “So much of what he's driving them towards, the membership don't accept. There's only so long he can get away with that. A point will come where that tension will present itself.”

He was also scathing about Cameron's media blitz: “He makes a speech a day about bugger all - did you hear the last one? About happiness? It was like listening to Ken Dodd. But seriously, at some point he's going to have to submit to a 20-minute interview, and what's he going to say in it?”

There's no doubt that Ming believes Cameron will crash and burn some day before the next election, and he seems quite happy to wait and watch. I think he's right. But I was hoping for something a little more proactive, a little more aggressive, to bring forward the day of the Great Combustion. Well, to be honest, not a little more - a lot more.

In parentheses, I should add that some people - the admirable Mike Smithson among them - have asked why some Lib Dems are obsessed with Cameron when they should be concentrating on attacking Labour. The way I see it, there are four main reasons:

1. Beating Labour often means keeping a lid on the Tory vote: a tight two-way contest gets much harder if anti-Labour people are pottering about randomly voting Conservative.
2. As said before, the prize for a successful attack on Cameron is huge. Labour, on the other hand, are being attacked by everyone else so why waste the ammunition?
3. If you're the third party you can't just concentrate on one of your opponents: trying to is like taking part in a particularly combative orgy - you might be able to shaft one of them, but the moment you turn your back on the other you're buggered.
4. Politics isn't just about cold calculation, it's also about emotion. For many of Thatcher's children, splatting the Tories is a patriotic duty. Plus, it's fun.

I might have liked to pursue these points a little further, but a disadvantage of the interview format kicked in, and not for the first time: the three of us asking the questions were operating an unspoken turn-and-turn about. No-one liked to hog centre stage for too long but, not knowing how much time we had available, no-one wanted to stay silent for too long either.

The effect of this was that points didn't get followed up very far and there was no flow or narrative through the interview as the subject changed often. In that sense it was more like a press conference than an interview - but a very polite press conference with no pack mentality among the questioners. Earlier I'd had more - and tougher - questions to ask about his leadership, but the opportunity to ask them passed and I didn't like to rewind the discussion and risk leaving other subjects unmentioned.

So, while more might have been said about attacking the Tories, we went off in a new direction as a question about free trade and globalism let Ming talk about the likely effects of Indian and Chinese growth on the economy, society and politics of Europe.

And then suddenly we were running out of time. No immediate pressure to stop, but just an awareness that we ought to start thinking about wrapping up somewhere in the not too distant future. I had two questions from members of my local party exec still to ask, so I jumped in with those.

During the leadership election, Ming allowed himself to be trapped into agreeing to get rid of his beloved vintage Jaguar in the cause of greater environmental purity. As a Triumph Spitfire owner, I didn't think it was his finest hour - classic cars are rarely state of the art and green-as-green, but they also get driven a lot less than road cars and therefore have a smaller environmental impact. Nevertheless, the die was cast and the question I was asking came from one of my more green-minded colleagues, Andrew Dakers, who wanted to know why he hadn't just converted the car to bio-fuel in order to demonstrate that environmental consciouness could also be fun.

Ming's eyes lit up when he heard about my Spitfire and he eagerly asked questions about its engine - ones, I'm afraid to say, that I wasn't terribly well equipped to answer as I'm no expert on car innards. Unlike him, it would seem. When I asked the question his face had to be seen to be believed as he boggled at the idea of a bio-fuelled Jag. At length, when his voice returned, he admitted that the short answer was that he didn't think of it in time.

The longer answer is that the car had a 12-cylinder engine, a piece of classic engineering that had potential purchasers 'oohing' and 'aahing', and he wasn't at all convinced it could have been converted. He said he kept fobbing off potential buyers and eventually donated the car to a museum where he visits on Sundays to stroke it. He said it with a smile, but there was an upsetting undertone of longing in his voice and I got the feeling that nothing the Tories could do to him could possibly hurt as much as this wound, inflicted by a supporter of one of his rivals in the leadership election.

From the politics of motoring I moved to the politics of race and international relations with a question from my good friend, and successor as Hounslow Lib Dem chair, Harjinder Singh. At the time of the French ban on religious garb in schools, Harjinder had lobbied for the Lib Dems to treat this as a human rights issue, with initial success that was ultimately squashed flat when the party (and Ming as foreign affairs spokesman) decided to treat it as an internal French matter. My questioning of this decision caught Ming somewhat by surprise - partly because I didn't have sufficient grasp of the subject to explain it well and partly because it had come so completely out of left field.

Rather caustically, but not unreasonably, he suggested Britain needed to be careful when preaching about human rights to other countries when we had work to do on that front ourselves. He then suggested a letter on the subject would get a more measured response.

By now, time really was running out. A question about what came next after this pretty successful few days was met with a cheery “business as usual” - a rather chilling answer when placed in the context of the 97 or so days that had preceded them. He maintained that even hostile political journalists could see perfectly well that his first few months as leader couldn't possibly be compared with those of David Cameron, who had had a transition period to get used to the job during a quiet time of year. It was tempting to reply that people who benefit from coups rarely get a soft landing and should be prepared for that fact. Tempting, but rather against the spirit of the occasion.

Meanwhile, Will Howells was eliciting some trenchant opinions from him on which was the best Doctor Who - so I gave up and switched to a different form of participatory democracy, asking who was going to win Big Brother (Pete, obviously). This morphed into a discussion of sport on TV and an assurance that he'd support England in the World Cup (but Great Britain in the Olympics, Europe in the Ryder Cup, and I think some Scottish sport as well).

And that was that.

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If you need any better illustration of the promising effect of Thursday's Lib Dem announcements, it's the way it's suddenly open season on the party on certain right-of-centre blogs, such as Guido (no less than three knocking posts in quick succession) and Iain Dale (the rather comical assertion that the announcements represent the most left wing agenda since Michael Foot - they really ought to get their stories straight, as Guido is calling it Thatcherite).

But obviously, I would say that, wouldn't I, as a Lib Dem?

The question of impartiality has been vexing me rather, since someone whose opinions I respect greatly looked at my last post and said it sounded like it had been written by the party press office. I'm not convinced it does, and it's an accurate record of my opinions, but even so.

I'm not a journalist any more, so I'm not obliged to be impartial. But I'm not a politican these days, either, and have no need to push a particular line - the only obligations I have remaining are to be honest in what I write and to apply a little critical intelligence.

It's with that in mind that I come to write up the interview that I and two other Lib Dem bloggers, Peter from the Apollo Blog and Will Howells, had with Ming Campbell earlier.

I'd been a critical supporter of Ming in the leadership contest, grown increasingly worried over the months that followed by the ease with which he was undermined by the opposition, but greatly reassured by his performance a couple of hours earlier as he made his big speech. I wasn't in a mood for Paxmaning him, as I might have been if he'd fluffed the speech, but I had some questions I badly wanted to know the answers to. I also had a couple supplied by members of my local party, and they weren't exactly simple either.

I won't dwell too much on what Will and Peter asked, as they have both supplied excellent write-ups in their respective blogs. My own agenda was largely about campaigning prospects and techniques rather than about policy.

The leadership

Will kicked things off with the obvious question - how would Ming characterise the first 100 days of his leadership? The answer was simple: “Challenging.” He elaborated by explaining how he'd been pitched straight into a party conference and a local election campaign, with no meaningful handover period, and only now was he able to settle down and get organised. Some the transitions had been difficult, not least getting used to Prime Minister's Questions, where he was likely to have almost 600 MPs actively opposing him. This was an unpleasant contrast with questions to the Foreign Secretary when he was deputy leader and shadowing that brief - in that role, he usually had half the House on his side as he bashed the other lot.

I asked one of the points I made on this blog last Wednesday after his success in PMQs - did he think he'd been successful that day because he'd picked a subject that was considered to be one of his specialist subjects and strengths? He agreed, emphatically, and explained that it was always difficult to plan a killer question on a hot topic because there was real chance that someone would ask it before it was his turn. On Iraq, though, he knew he was on safe ground - the Tories wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

Communicating

It's one of my hobby-horses that we communicate well with educated types who read the Independent and have degrees, but not at all well with the huddled masses. What, I asked, were we going to do to change that?

I wasn't wholly convinced by the reply, though part of it was very good. The less-good part was a rallying cry to repeat the successes achieved on local councils in Liverpool and Newcastle at a Westminster level in the great northern cities - a very fine aim, but lacking in detail as to how it might be achieved. He floated the need to communicate with more people over the internet, before correcting himself that we were probably talking about a lot of socially excluded people with a lower-than-average online prescence. Then he hit his stride talking about crime.

He'd already gone into some detail about the need for a robust but liberal approach to crime when answering one of Peter's questions. Now he returned to it and linked it explicitly to the question of how to talk to the socially excluded, the people with no stake in politics and precious little in society.

He said: “The people on the council estates are the ones whose houses get broken into and have to dodge flying bottles on Saturday night or who have neighbours from hell.” I'd been deeply suspicious of many of the details of his recent law and order announcement, at the same time as welcoming the fact he was speaking out on this issue. I remain suspicious, but am reassured to find there's more to it than knee-jerk right-wing populism. Crime is a powerful issue for connecting with people who don't want to be connected with.

And now it's pushing 2am and I need to sleep. The rest of this interview will have to wait. But as a teaser, I leave this quote from Campbell about his opposite number in the Tories: “He makes a speech a day about bugger all - did you hear the last one? About happiness? It was like listening to Ken Dodd, all he needed was a tickling stick.”

It's a funny old world when the replacement of a media-conscious young leader with a silver-haired patrician is the cue for the first ever free-for-all interview between a party leader and a bunch of bloggers. Admittedly, we were Lib Dem bloggers and therefore house trained, but our 45-minute session today with Sir Menzies Campbell explicitly had no preconditions attached, no advance notice of questions, no no-go areas, and no requirement for copy approval afterwards. Is this the future? I'd like to think so.

To deal with the important stuff first, Ming has a genuine petrol-head's love of talking about car engines, will be supporting England in the World Cup, accepts that Pete will probably win Big Brother, and has strong opinions on Doctor Who (which I'll let Will Howells write about as they are his scoop). I didn't ask about his ties.

There was also a lot of other stuff about cutting income tax, penalising environmental polluters, reducing the number of MPs and breaking up the Home Office to make it operate better. Stuff like that.

And I have this to report: Ming has a spring in his step and he's looking and sounding sharp.

The thing that has worried me in the past - and I've alluded to it from time to time here - is that he seemed to be carrying his years badly. He sounded frail, looked pale, and at times seemed slack-jawed and confused.

Not any more.

Today's speech was billed as his vision for the future of the party. Unkinder souls called it a relaunch after an initial tenure as leader that had been somewhat underwhelming. It could have gone either way - the ghost of Iain Duncan Smith could easily have stalked Millbank - but in fact it went well. Better than well, actually. The relief on the face of Nick Clegg as he congratulated him afterwards was palpable, while Jo Swinson - who looks so young in the flesh that she should surely be presenting Why Don't You? rather than representing East Dunbartonshire in the House of Commons - looked on him as one would a favourite grandfather who's just outsprinted all the dads in a parents' race at a school sports day.

The Atrium at 4 Millbank is an excellent location to make an announcement - I have argued before that because Ming looks traditional he should choose modern settings - but its acoustics are dire. It was difficult to follow everything he said, but that was OK because he was actually saying it mostly for TV and they'd made the proper arrangements. The speech touched all the right buttons, speaking of the greater professionalism he's introducing to the party's workings and of the policy areas he considers the most important.

It ended with a rallying cry:

“I want a Britain where opportunity is the birth right of every child, a Britain where ambition is nurtured and aspiration encouraged.

“I want a Britain to be proud of.”

That provoked a frenzy of nods from all the MPs standing on the platform with him - only Vince Cable and Saj Karim MEP refrained. Previously, while he was speaking, the cluster of senior colleagues around him had all practiced their best “listening seriously” faces, with Swinson and Ed Davey winning by miles. Each, as their own policy area came up in the speech, nodded on cue - Michael Moore with a slight look of puzzlement, as if he'd just been airlifted from the Big Brother house and wasn't quite sure why he was there, Chris Huhne emphatically, as if he was checking off the points to make sure he approved.

As Ming left, the acoustics of the Atrium started to work in his favour. The applause was loud and genuine - but the vast chamber magnified it and as he walked up the long sweep of steps to leave, pausing to shake hands and wave, the sound seemed to carry him upwards. One Lib Dem staffer later reported hearing a woman's breathless voice saying “I touched him! I shook his hand!” Most people stopped short of that level of adoration (no-one threw underwear) but spirits were clearly high. The event had succeeded.

Media reaction has so far also been broadly positive. It's hardly headline news on the day when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi died and Wayne Rooney's foot was reborn, but it's had an encouraging response and the proposed cut in income tax has been picked up as a story. The Beeb's Nick Robinson stood at the back looking thoughtful as Ming spoke, occasionally sipping from a tall glass and checking the pre-supplied text of Campbell's speech with the words he actually delivered. His blog has nothing to say about the event.

Unlike this one, and the Apollo Blog, and Will Howells. The future, you see, unfolding in front of you.

A second post, with the actual interview, will follow soon. The full text of the speech is here.

This spoof McDonald’s presentation, seemingly showing how the company had, through strategy gaming during manager training, realised its policies were contributing to global warming, had me utterly fooled when I first saw it reported deadpan. I thought to myself ‘crikey, what do we do now if the Golden Arches have suddenly become the good guys’? Felt a bit of a prat later in the day when I found the reports of its spoofness - should have known better than to think McD’s might have learned some corporate responsibility!

So Ming scored a direct hit at PMQs today, then. He must have done, because everyone's saying he did.

And that rather highlights the problem with this leadership business. Ming's success today was partly because he left Tony Blair gasping like a newly-landed haddock, and partly because people were prepared to report that he did.

It's no coincidence that the subject he stitched Blair up on was rendition flights - part of the whole US-UK-Iraq screw-up that helped him make his name as an effective and respected Parliamentarian. If he'd caught Blair napping on, say, education his success would have formed part of the ongoing “is he any good as leader” narrative that's dominated since he took over. Because it was actually in an area he'd previously been praised for it allowed even hostile writers like Iain Dale, who wears his bitterness over his North Norfolk humiliation vividly in every well-crafted sentence he constructs, to dust off the old “Ming scores another hit on Iraq” narrative.

But it's not just Ming whose leadership is defined as much by how it's reported as by what he actually does - the same is true of David Cameron, who has so far managed to create the illusion of great success by ensuring that the very little he's actually done is reported as if he'd been handing out loaves, fishes and triple Club Card points to allcomers.

In fact, it's probably true to say that the only negative currently associated with an otherwise buoyant Liberal Democrat party is the perceived problems surrounding the leadership, while the only positive associated with a Tory Party that hasn't fundamentally changed since the fall of Thatcher is the buzz that's attached to Cameron.

In other words, if Ming scores a few more hits like today and establishes himself more solidly, then we'll be off into the distance faster than Julia Goldsworthy in a velodrome whereas, if David Cameron steered his famous bicycle under the wheels of the chauffeur-driven car that infamously follows it, the whole Tory Party would soon follow him into oblivion.

That's why the stakes are so high in the Bromley by-election - the Conservatives may live to regret their questionable decision to field a non-local, pro-Europe candidate in a constituency where the Lib Dems can attack hard and where one of the leading lights in the UK Independence Party makes his home. The late Eric Forth finished almost 30 points ahead of the chasing pack in last year's general election, with 51 per cent of the vote. If the Liberal Democrats and UKIP each manage to shave 10 points off that lead then Cameron will look somewhat tarnished - any more and he'll have some serious explaining to do.

But it won't be the end of him - far from it. There are so many people who want him to succeed that he will be able to survive not only minor blunders but also one or two thumping great ones. A whole swathe of the political and commentating classes want to see a credible Conservative Party and they'll keep Cameron propped up even if he shows signs of falling over - no matter what they think of him personally.

Because the truth about Cameron - one of the truths, anyway - is that many of his party like what he's doing to their poll ratings and are willing him to succeed but aren't entirely convinced by the man himself. Rather as Labour's Old Left put up with Blair in order to get into power, a significant proportion of the Tory Party are perfectly happy to go along for the ride without necessarily signing up to the driver's planned route to the destination. It would be misleading to suggest there's any serious resistance to his agenda at this stage, but there's certainly a lot of eagle eyes watching him even as they support him. They well remember how Labour's left ended up as an irrelevance and don't fancy history repeating itself.

Cameron's task in keeping them happy while simultaneously suggesting to the public that he's not listening to them has often been compared with walking a tightrope, possibly - if the writer is particularly excitable - one stretched over a tank of piranhas. It's not actually like that at all. It's worse.

Instead, he's like the bloke who takes the food into the lion cage.

So long as he keeps bringing them what they want - success, dead goats - they're more than happy to welcome him. There may be something slightly odd about the way he smells, something less than ideal about what he brings - surely a live goat, or deep blue water Conservatism, would be preferable - and their instincts might be screaming out to rip him to shreds, but when all is said and done a dead goat or a poll lead is not something to be sniffed at.

But, like the lion feeder, Cameron will run into trouble if he starts turning up empty-handed. They'll let him do it for a while without harming him - at the risk of flogging a dead goat with this metaphor, the possibility of future food from a proven provider is better than the certainty of none from a bloody heap on the floor. However, he must know that if he doesn't keep delivering then pretty soon the likes of the Tory traditionalists and the Murdoch press will be eyeing him hungrily. And even with them on his side, his success is based largely on his personality at the moment - he's more likeable than Labour, and that's all he needs at the moment. Actual policies could damage that and he's wise not to develop any and concentrate on general positioning instead.

Non-Labour politics, it seems to me, is currently being driven by two leadership narratives - the Tories being boosted by Cameron's positive one, the Lib Dems being held back by Campbell's negative one. It will be far, far harder for Campbell to reverse his than it will be for Cameron to maintain his, although today suggested Ming might yet manage it. But Britain's celebrity-obsessed, build-'em-up-and-knock-'em-down, culture could see Cameron's bubble burst at any moment.

And if I were a Conservative, that would scare me very much indeed.

Tomorrow, after Ming Campbell makes his big speech about his vision of the party's future, I'll be interviewing him for this blog. I may put these points to him and see what he has to say. Or I may just ask where he buys his ties and who he thinks will win Big Brother, for I am a naturally shallow person and can only keep up this analytical stuff for so long…

The shiny new Tory Party looks a little less shiny this morning, after its Bromley members last night rejected two high-fliers from David Cameron's A-List as their Parliamentary by-election candidate in favour of a middle-aged white male Freemason from Tower Hamlets who seems to represent everything the Tories are supposed to be moving away from.

Cameron did say local associations were free to select local candidates over the A-List, but Neill's local connection (he represents Bexley & Bromley on the Greater London Assembly) is tenuous at best - no stronger than Robert Evans had in Brent East as the area's European Parliamentarian, and that did him no good at all. In fact, it's likely to become a liability for Neill as he's apparently told the Bromley Tories that if he wins the by-election he will stay as GLA member until the next elections in 2008 - drawing both salaries.

The news of his selection has already draw some press criticism and has some - not all - Tories clutching their heads at the own goal. Politics.co.uk writes: “Conservative activists have rejected leader David Cameron's latest attempt to modernise the party by trying to get more women and ethnic minorities elected to parliament”, the Indy (unsurprisingly, as it is far from pro-Tory) adds “last night, the Conservative Party put a brave face on the choice and denied that it was a snub,” the far more sympathetic Times says “the attempt by David Cameron, the Conservative leader, to get more women and ethnic minorities onto the Tory benches in the Commons failed its first test last night,” and the Telegraph reports it as the “first snub for Cameron's 'beautiful' A-list” - along with a photo of the candidate that has to be seen to be believed.

Among bloggers Guido Fawkes, broadly Tory but always up for a chance to cause mischief, writes: “So Cameron's Conservatives in Bromley and Chislehurst have chosen Bob Neill, a pin-striped, old, grey-haired, male barrister to fight the by-election. Back to the drawing board for the A-list, which hasn't worked out too brilliantly this time… UPDATE : He doesn't actually live locally and he is an opera loving Freemason (Greater London Lodge). Isn't it all just so retro 1950s?”

Comments vary on Conservative Home, where a certain sort of Tory activist likes to go and play, and many of the more hostile ones are unlikely to be from Tories. However, two of the more plausibly genuine ones say:

Sad day for the party. Our party is unrepresentative of the country we seek to govern. This is why we need the A-List to change the face of the Conservative Party. And what happens? The first test and the local association fails the party by not choosing from the A-List and electing yet another old white man. Those who wish our party ill will be delighted by this result - Gordon will be smiling…

and

Until Conservatives from top to bottom start showing some loyalty to our leader David Cameron's attempt to get the party back into power will be like running a marathon with one leg!

Of course, most of the site is rallying behind its party's candidate - but the graphic it heads the post with unwitting says everything that needs to be said. It's certainly not what its designer meant but, without intending to, it sums up perfectly the problem with the Tories once you skim the Cameroonies off the surface:

The Conservative Party - no women or darkies need apply.

Download this factsheet

There's still time - just - to get over the Passport Office's website and renew your passport before the end of the month. I did mine a couple of days ago.

Why do it?

Because, as far as we can tell, if you get it done by the end of the month then you avoid going on the national identity database - the real Big Brother scariness behind the ID card scheme.

This is from the Renew for Freedom website:

You may have heard that you'll be able to opt out of having an ID card if you renew your passport before 1st January 2010. But the card is not the point. Even if you chose not to have it, you would still have to pay for it. And you will get no choice about attending an official interview, producing numerous personal documents to be recorded, and having your fingerprints and eye scans taken for the records.

Once you are on the Register, you will never get off until it is abolished. But you'll be exposed to all the risks and dangers of the scheme immediately. The Home Office is building the most complex and intrusive ID control system in the world. It will certainly go wrong.

Renewing by the end of May keeps you from having to sign up for the database for a decade - by which time hopefully it will have been abolished - and also sends a two-fingered signal that you don't believe in that sort of thing.

The Lib Dem home affairs team renew
their passports in protest against the
ID register

According to Nick Clegg, Lib Dem Shadow Home Secretary and one of a number of senior Lib Dems to have renewed in protest: “ID cards will be expensive, intrusive and ineffective. I urge everyone who is concerned about their introduction to join the NO2ID 'Renew for Freedom' campaign and renew their passport over the coming weeks.

“The Liberal Democrats were the only party to vote against the introduction of identity cards, and we're making our opposition clear today by buying ourselves 10 years of freedom from this unnecessary scheme.”

Now, speaking personally, I know who I am and I don't see why I should have to prove it to some pointy-headed little bureaucrat from the Home Office at the instruction of some faceless New Labour government beetle who went from student unionism to the House of Commons without discovering real life in the middle.

Just my view. Might not be yours, but it's mine.

So, let’s see if I’ve got this straight.

In the last week or so:

• Chris Huhne has made an arse of himself by presenting a combination of sensible environmental tax policies and an income tax cut in such a way that they get reported as a £2,000 hike in people’s car tax.
• Simon Hughes has made an arse of himself by pompously laying into the party leader - who beat him soundly in the leadership election - and having to be slapped down for behaving like a Tory.
• Mark Oaten has made an arse of himself by growing a silly beard and prancing around on TV in an apparent bid to become the next Neil and Christine Hamilton.
• And today, Ming Campbell has made an arse of himself by loudly criticising a pretty innocuous internal email sent round about the Bromley by-election, thus ensuring that we start the campaign with one hand tied behind our backs.

In other words, each man has demonstrated exactly the weakness his opponents suspected him of during the leadership campaign. Huhne’s been too clever for his own good and ignored the wider picture. Hughes has been an egomanical loose cannon. Oaten’s been a shallow prat with no awareness of his own ridiculousness. And Ming… well, let’s not even go there.

No wonder it was so difficult to decide who to vote for.

White stilettos.

The first installment of Channel 4's The Games has just ended, with Cornish Liberal Democrat MP Julia Goldsworthy placed third of five in the women's contest after suffering a dunking in the white-water kayaking despite being the pre-contest favourite.

Looking at her contestant page on the C4 website, bits read as if it came off a Focus leaflet - in fact, a fair bit of it probably did as it's also on her personal website.

I'm a huge reality TV junkie and enjoyed previous series of The Games, because it's one of those shows (like Hell's Kitchen and Strictly Come Dancing) that stretch people to unexpected heights using skills that they'd never normally exercise. But of course I also looked at it from the point of view of a Liberal Democrat wondering how one of the best and brightest of our young MPs would fare in a medium that only a few weeks ago holed George Galloway below the waterline.

Would anyone actually watch it? What would be the likely outcome of her participation for her and for the party? Good thing? Bad thing? Greater exposure to a different audience? More 'Chatshow Charlie' criticism?

My worry before the show was that every reality TV programme needs a villain, and an MP is a pretty good candidate to be transformed into the Wicked Witch of the South West in the edit room. That didn't seem to happen - we saw lots of her in the background encouraging her fellow contestants. Failing to win the event will have also prevented her from coming across as too unsympathetic and driven, odd though it sounds.

In fact, she was in the background a lot - we didn't see much of her in the foreground, especially in the athlete's village set-up where they all have to stay overnight. This makes me wonder whether she's got a dispensation from the producers to spend less time there than the rest because of her day job (we didn't see a great deal of her in the training footage either). If that's the case, it reduces the chance of any damaging Galloway-style pictures - but also makes it difficult for her to make an impact on the viewers. And it could also be that the producers think she's too boring to show.

Best moment BY FAR was when she was introduced to the cheering crowd as “Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury” - any Tories in the audience will have been spitting tacks. Their boy Rickett did well in the waterski jump, though.

Reaction on the Digital Spy forums has been somewhat muted: people are starting to make their minds up about the competitors, but I don't sense any strong swing for or against anyone, despite this post:

A good first night, I thought …..

Obviously, some training repeats from E4, but also some new shots of the village …..

Kayak :

Amanda dumped - hahahahaha - Nil points - she is crap at everything …..

Bernie - scared shitless but did her best - well done …..

Javine and Michelle - excellent performances …..

Julia - tried too hard and blew it - will do better …..

But some comments suggest Goldsworthy has already fallen victim to the near-inevitable fate of reality TV women - to be judged on her looks and physique rather than her abilities:

ic1male: Why is he calling Julia Goldsworthy the Peanut Smuggler?

slappers r us: Because her nipples were sticking out

ic1male: Oh! I wasn't paying much attention to those bits of her anatomy

And:

Kayak first………….. whaddaya reckon ? I guess it's the one with the quickest time wins……….. I think I'll go for Julie………… see looks like a kayaky girl to me

Also did you note how they stressed 'MP' when they introduced…………. she's obviously this year#s posh totty. Anyway, she's got a nice big bum………… should keep her wedged in that kayak………….

Nine days of that sort of thing should set her up nicely for her return to the House of Commons…

But despite that, overall, so far so good I think - no banana skins trodden on yet. It just depends what role the producers think she should fill in the show's ongoing narrative…