"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.

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…

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.

Chris is winning! No - Ming is winning! Bloody hell - just count the votes already.

Edit: Some interesting commentary at politicalbetting.com suggests that neither paper (but particularly the Graun) took much care to check the people they were polling were party members and therefore entitled to vote. There’s also some suggestion that it would have been easy for people to get themselves polled multiple times, although no evidence that anyone actually did so.

Whole books have been written on the ideal qualities of a leader: the ability to inspire - coolness under fire - broad strategy combined with tactical nous - high principles tempered by low cunning - luck, as well as judgement. Fewer have been written about the failings that leaders must avoid - even though one failing can trump a whole hatful of qualities.

Anyone drawing up a shopping list of qualities for an ideal leader of the Liberal Democrats could amuse themselves for hours picking the distinguishing characteristics that he or she should have and then mapping them to the three candidates currently standing.

Recent history however shows that, whatever qualities are necessary, hardly any failings a Lib Dem leader might have really matter a damn. In the past 30 or so years we have had a leader embroiled in a lurid court case, another regularly lampooned as a puppet in a rival's pocket, a third who was revealed to be a philanderer and, most recently, another who was a drunk. Despite that, the party has for the most part advanced. Admittedly, the march forwards has at times been more of a stagger or a weave, but the general progress has been positive.

But there is one failing a leader of the third party cannot have - they cannot be dull.

There is no rule that says anyone has to take notice of a single thing the Liberal Democrats say, do or think - even with 62 63 MPs. It's down to the leader to make a connection with the public imagination and force the media to take notice. In their different ways Kennedy, Ashdown, Steel, Thorpe and - before them - Grimond all did it.

Sir Menzies Campbell is not dull. He may carry his age a trifle too heavy on his shoulders and he may forever have to look behind him for fear of what ill health may be creeping up on him, but he has already demonstrated that he can inspire the respect and interest necessary to forge that connection. The rest is detail. A Campbell party would be listened to, because Campbell is listened to.

Simon Hughes is not dull, either. Of erratic judgement possibly, disorganised frequently, but again this is detail. Simon has proved time and again that he can reach out to the public and communicate in a manner that resonates with them. A Hughes party would connect, because Hughes connects.

Chris Huhne, alas, is dull. Even his supporters admit that this is his Achilles heel, although they will not be so blunt in the way that they phrase it and they point out, rightly, that a lot can be learned to overcome this. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied. His literature proudly quotes a commentator who describes him as “Britain's most formidable one-man think-tank”. No small achievement, and the party is infinitely the stronger for having him in its ranks, but not a contradiction of his basic weakness - some might say it reinforces it, in fact. A Huhne party would be respected yes, admired yes, because Huhne is respected and admired. But that is where it would stop. A grey man in a grey suit will never - but never - prove the salvation of the third party.

Which is why I say this: if Chris Huhne is elected as leader of the Liberal Democrats we might as well pack up and go home now, because the only fate that awaits is to be the most formidable little think-tank on the opposition benches.

Well said that man!

“David Cameron’s flip-flops on policy expose his inexperience. He’s still a novice. A leader with L-Plates.

“So while Conservatives may think that youth, inexperience, and naivete are the answer to their problems; I say they are not the answer to the country’s problems.

“Tomorrow’s Britain needs leaders of experience, proven good judgement, who people know they can trust. That’s my territory Mr Cameron, not yours. And I can’t wait for the chance to put that choice to the British people.”

Ming Campbell today

That’s exactly the ground he should be fighting on.

In not entirely unrelated news, my leadership ballot went in the post today - and I’m more confident than I have been for some time now that the “1″ was next to the correct name.

I was phone canvassed by the Campbell campaign yesterday and the combination of that and some conversations I've had with members in my local party suggest exactly why my favoured choice for leader isn't waltzing home unchallenged - why, in fact, he is quite likely to lose to Chris Huhne.

It's not his age, or his health, or his policies, or even his sodding Jaguar. It's his supporters.

The canvass conversation went, as best as I can remember, something like this:

Perky young female voice: Hi, I'm Sarah from Ming Campbell's campaign, and I'm calling to see if you'll be supporting him.

Me: I suppose I better had, since I was on his blog as a supporter.

Perky young female voice (confused): You're on the supporters' list?

Me: No, on the blog.

Perky young female voice: Oh. Would you like us to add you to the supporters' list?

Me: No, I thought about it, but then I remembered all those crocodiles behind him with knives in their hands covered with Charles Kennedy's blood and nearly decided not to vote for him after all.

Perky young female voice (disapprovingly, as if to a madman): Right, okay.

Pause

Perky young female voice: (cheerful again) Do you mind me asking who your second preference is going to?

Me: Simon, probably.

Perky young female voice: Thank you very much! Byeee!

And off she went. My first thought afterwards was to wonder why she wanted to know about my second preference - it will only come into play if Ming comes last so it's not as if they can do anything with the information. Far more use to find out the second preference of people who say they're not voting for him.

What strikes me now was how unable she was to deal with my hostility towards Ming's supporters. Of course, it may have been the way I expressed it, or uncertainty what to do now we were off the script. But it was symptomatic of a lack of understanding in Campbell Towers of how much latent hostility is still slopping around about the Kennedy assassination.

I dropped out of active politics some time in 2003, completely burned out after spending several years demonstrating to my own satisfaction that I didn't have what it takes to be the next Lynne Featherstone or Norman Lamb - ie, someone who takes a hopeless third place and turns it into a Lib Dem gain by hard work and sheer force of personality.

I have recently got involved again to help one of our councillors in his re-election campaign, but my disappearance meant there were quite a few friends who I hadn't spoken to for quite literally years and who I'm now catching up with. Inevitably, we've talked about the leadership.

It seems to me that most people look on voting for Simon Hughes in the same way they would look at eating a whole box of chocolate eclairs - they'd really, really like to do it (and some will) but they know it's bad for them so most will regretfully decide against it. And that has nothing to do with the furore about his sexuality - that was the way it was going anyway. Note: My Hughes-supporting Beloved Other Half takes very extreme exception to this paragraph and considers it to be utterly without foundation for a very long list of reasons. We are not the Darbyshires in this household, I'll tell you that…

It's also clear that the reason lots of members are taking a serious look at what Chris Huhne has to offer is because of lingering anger about the fall of Charles Kennedy. Partly that anger is directed at Ming himself, but I think a lot of people who are prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt are seriously turned off by a number of his supporters.

Speaking personally, I'd be very happy if Campbell and Huhne could swap supporters - most of the people I respect, including the person I would have preferred to see as the next leader, are supporting him.

But although Ming obviously thinks his MP supporters are his great strength, they are actually his biggest weakness. There's a real dislike of Sarah Teather among almost everybody I've spoken to - she really hasn't won herself any friends at all. But it spreads further than just her. As others among Lib Dem bloggers have said, Ming's strategy of referring to himself as a “bridge to the future” is a bad one. It was the man himself who built, over years, a reputation as one of Parliament's most respected MPs - not the people who might or might not support him.

But I'm going to put it more bluntly than that. If Ming doesn't immediately put people like Nick Clegg in a box, nail down the lid, and start playing the “politics is too important to be left to schoolboys” card against David Cameron, he will lose the leadership to Chris Huhne.

And it will be his own fault.

I believe that two things are going to happen in British politics over the next few years.

Firstly, when Blair goes there will be a backlash against young, slick media-friendly politicians. Gravitas and dourness will be in, charm and twinkling smiles will be out. It's been brewing for years and it'll take just one spark for the public mood to switch. It's going to be a very bad time to be David Cameron, David Milliband, DavidNick Clegg or one of seemingly hundreds of identikit political clones.

Secondly, the change in Labour's leadership will merely delay the increasing unpopularity of the government instead of reversing it. In other words, I believe it'll be like the long, slow death of the Tory government all over again - remember how people thought John Major was basically an okay sort of bloke but couldn't wait to see the back of his administration?

For these assumptions to come true, a whole other set of assumptions have to fail to come true - most obviously, if either Brown or Cameron (or both) turn out to be electoral Viagra for their parties, then things will be very different. But I don't think they're going to be.

So where will that leave the Liberal Democrats?

Still at the crease, about to hit the ball over the pavilion, out of the ground and through the bloke next door's greenhouse into his tomato plants.

None of the three candidates for leader are exactly what you might call a fluffy media bunny. You may have seen the Question Time audience react to the idea that Ming Campbell might be too old - I've written about it before, it was the moment when I thought “he's our next leader”. If he's in charge when the backlash against smarm combines with a “get the bastards out” move against Labour, we'll be laughing. Which is not to say that Simon and Chris would be a liability under those circumstances - I think they would also be well placed to seize the moment. But not as well.

Because I think there will be a moment to be seized. The biggest thing we have to worry about right now is a blue tide washing us away, and it's not happening. Monday's Independent carries an analysis of recent polls by John Curtice of Strathclyde University. It's grim reading in one sense - but not in others.

Professor Curtice said the conventional wisdom at Westminster that Mr Cameron was hurting the Liberal Democrats, and that their problems were good news for the Tories “does not fit the facts”.

This is basically the argument I made recently - the Tories are not doing us much damage at all. We're doing plenty ourselves, but the support we're losing is drifting to Labour, not to Cameron. And if things go as I think they will, we can get it back.

Of course, this all depends on one thing: that we can haul ourselves back on track very quickly indeed - starting, ideally, from yesterday. People have been laughing at us for a few weeks now - if they don't stop soon, they may not stop at all, in which case all my theorising goes for nothing and we'll be back to the days when the Parliamentary party could meet in the back of a taxi.

Those of you with long enough memories will recall a previous cure for being laughed at that worked rather well.

I seem to remember a time when our “Social and Liberal Democrats” name was derided as “Salads” and the new bird of freedom logo was being mocked as a dead parrot. Overnight, all that stopped. And if my memory serves me right what stopped it was the Eastbourne by-election victory. After that, Lib Dems (oh, alright, SaLaDs) across the country could be heard chanting “you're not singing, you're not singing, you're not singing any more”.

So we'd better fucking win in Dunfermline, that's all I can say.