I haven’t paid all that much attention to Chris’s legs, so I’ll have to trust you on that one. Must admit, though, as the bearer of a mere Desmond I had a bit of difficulty in following your lofty 2:1 language.

But to be serious, your arguments cover a lot of the reasons I didn’t support him last time and didn’t expect to be considering supporting him this time. However, if he can kill Cameron then that alone takes the pressure off in so many of the areas he’s a bit weak.

Lynne:

Thanks for the comment, which created a pleasing circularity as almost the first thing I did in this leadership contest was leave a comment on your blog – a sadly unsuccessful attempt to urge you to stand.

We need one of two things in a leader, as regards the press. They need either to be fireproof, as you say Chris is and as Nick appears not to be in the way we hoped, or they need to be exempt from attack because the media rather likes them and will cut them a lot of slack – see much of the Cameron leadership, Ming when shadowing foreign affairs, or the whole of the Reagan presidency. There was some hope that Nick might fall into that second category (Chris clearly doesn’t) but this campaign has created a big question mark over that point.

‘Vote for my man because he can stand up to bullies’ is a pretty unhappy rallying cry, though, because of what it says about politics at the moment. Dammit – why didn’t you stand?

Leadership is the roughest game in town. The media adore Vince at the moment (a) because he’s having a ball and b)no doubt an effort in redemption for their mercilessness toward Ming) but that will end abruptly as we announce our new leader. Neither candidate is perfect – but I have absoutely no worries about Chris’s ability to deal with whatever is thrown at him – and given what will be thrown – the initial baptism of fire will colour the leadership and the LibDems in perpetuity.

I could give you loads more reasons to vote for Chris – ability to get coverage, ability to think on his feet, brilliant termperament when the going gets rough and so on – but you asked for one!

(Linda, I would have thought ‘not getting on with the Parliamentary Party’ would have been right at the top of your list of requirements for a party leader! ;-)))

Interesting post and really important points. However, two considerations that I think you may have overlooked.

Firstly, leadership is about more than communicating to the outside world, but it is a lot about that and I don’t think Chris does that effectively enough, I think you really need an Oxbridge First and enormous concentration, to follow him, which is great for the great and the good amongst us, but some of us only managed a 2:1…….and not from Oxbridge!

Secondly, it is also about the whole scope of leadership. The leader has to straddle 3 horses – the electorate, the party – especially the activists and the parliamentary party. Have political legs too short to effectively straddle all 3 and you are heading for trouble. My fear with Chris is that his legs won’t quite stretch to the parliamentary party.

Ed: have been meaning to drop you a line – it’s been a few years since Norwich, hasn’t it?

Charlotte: That’s my whole point, really. I agree with most of what you say, it’s just – I remember the last Tory government and part of me is thinking any amount of playing dirty is worth it to avoid another one.

Paul: Thanks very much!

More recently he has done it to Labour through asking the police to investigate donorgate.

Excellent post.

This isn’t a vacancy to head up the party’s general election campaign, or to run our campaigns in general. Why would Huhne’s willingness and ability to campaign negatively have a positive impact on decisions on whether or not he’s the right person to represent our party to the British public?

Electing the dirty campaigner is the wrong thing to do. Think about what message that would send to the British public, what people would think if they knew we’d elected someone in the hope that they would, “…lie, cheat, mangle the truth, hit below the belt and generally behave like a cross between Karl Rove and Ric Flair”?

No way I could support a party that behaves like that. It’s disrespectful to the public and the electorate. If you don’t respect them, if you’re willing to lie to them then you’re no better than the others.