What a strange, superficial world British politics has become ! Ming resigns because he is too old ? Or doesn't land punches in his two questions at the weekly Punch & Judy show known as PMQs ? How ridiculous.
I have been critical of Ming within the party because I disagreed with him about Trident and generally I felt his approach to policy was too cautious. The latter complaint applies not particularly to Ming but to the whole policy-making apparatus of the Liberal Democrats. As I think Simon Titley wrote in Liberator, just changing the leader won't solve that problem. It's a change of tactics that's necessary. Liberal Democrats don't need to win every vote in the country and should not be afraid to alienate some. We can and should speak for liberalism, not some curious melange called "Liberal Democracy". Incidentally, look at the loudest public critics of Ming who have fed the media desire for splits - Bill Rodgers, Dick Taverne, Chris Clarke. Guess what - all Social Democrats ! As Simon also commented on radio - the problem was not the so-called Young Turks (Chris Huhne is in his 50s) but the old gits !
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