Cliff Edge

Is the party about to jump? Because frankly fellow liberals I fear that is what we will be doing if we publically immolate and remove another Leader less than two years after the last one. However before I explain why and what I think we should do next lets go back to Sedgefield and Ealing. Having visited one and seen a full portfolio of leaflets from another the silent question was obvious. Has there been an election campaign by the party in the last 20 years that has so obviously air brushed out the Party Leader? Indeed on some of the Ealing Stuff Charlie was much more prominent than Ming. As a Kennedy fan I mention as an aside that I hope Charlie has a framed copy of one of these in his study and toasts it now again with a wee dram. Put bluntly if our own campaigns team thinks the Party Leader has to be air brushed out of our camapign literature then why are the rest of us even debating the issue?

I will nail my colours to the mast. I'm happy for Ming to stay. He won the leadership fair and square and by a comfortable margin. I'm clear in my mind that 80% of the drop in opinion poll support we have seen would have happened under my chosen Leader, Simon Hughes. Much of the craving for a leadership election is displacement activity rather than facing the strategic threats we are anxious to leave unattended. If we agree that the political press can undermine leaders with speculation we'll be having an election every couple of years. Nor do I believe that we should kneel at the cult of youth.

However we can't go on as we are. Anonymous briefings feeding an external feeding frenzy. We have to plausible choices.

Firstly Ming can decide that he has had enough. He needs to do this in the next 7 days or so and we can have an long Leadership campaign with some thinking involved.

Secondly Ming can say he's staying with a statement of support from both Parliamentry Parties. Any anonymous briefers need to be named, shamed and fired. If we batten down the hatches and get agressive with pesky journalists they will loose interest in this non story.

What must not happen in my view is option three which appears to have already begun. The disaffected using 24 hour rolling news to feed a slow burning corrosive attack on the party Leader. They know full well that the membership will conclude not that it wants Ming to go but that he'll have to. The briefers will create a self fulfilling prophecy. Successful political parties do not treat leaders like an M and S party dress, something that is fully refundable if you don't like it once you get it home. If we are putting people up and saying "he/she should be PM" and 12 months later you kick them to death you damage your brand perhaps for a decade.

I'm not optomistic. I suspect poption 3 has already begun. My view is that those doing it are deluded soccerers apprentices who don't know what they are about to unleash. By monday we'll know if its option 1. If it is then to end on a cliche we must all hang together or most assuredly we'll hang seperately.