A Timely Reform by Ian Ridley

So Charles Kennedy has gone, although he may well be back on the front bench in the future.

Meanwhile the Lib Dems need a new Leader (we are not leaderless at the moment as Menzies Campbell is Acting Leader)

As I write potential candidates Mark Oaten & Nick Clegg are both backing Ming, who has already declared his intention to stand.

We could be heading for a coronation but if someone else throws their hat into the ring, it will interesting to see what Oaten & Clegg do. The only reasons for MPs allying themselves with a candidate is:

1. They want a quick move to a new leader and think the candidate will be unopposed – a leadership election can take up to 10 weeks so would end sometime in March 2006;
2. They don’t have enough MPs to get themselves nominated;
3. The don’t want to be Leader anyway.

In my opinion Oaten & Clegg fall into Category 1. If the election is contested then that becomes irrelevant. And they won’t have to worry about splitting the vote. The AV voting system used (a single-winner version of STV) means that if they don’t get enough votes to be among the leading contenders, then the other preferences of their voters will be counted (this is not a very good way of putting it but for more detail see the Wikipedia article) . It’s a far more elegant and quicker method than the repeated ballots the Tories use to allow their MPs to whittle down their leadership contenders

Personally I hope for either a coronation of Ming or a completely open contest in which all the major players are on the ballot paper. I think Ming vs. a couple of outsiders will just distract from the normal campaigning activities of the Lib Dems.

There is always room for legitimate debate about any party’s leadership and direction. But the anonymous briefings against Charles Kennedy before Christmas have now been followed by an absurd and ill-conceived petition over the New Year.

The petition is run by an independent magazine called The Liberal but is being portrayed by the organisers as a groundswell movement of Lib Dem members and supporters.

Just a few of the things that are wrong about this campaign:

• The petition website does not make it clear who is behind the petition. There are only obscure web and email links to the magazine in question;
• No checks about who is signing the petition. There are already reports of people signing on behalf of someone else without seeking permission;
• No checks whether signatories are in fact Lib Dem members. Tony Blair could sign and still be part of the total;
• No verification of email addresses. Creativity is encouraged;
• It won’t achieve the aims of the organisers. There are constitutional means for this;
• Ben Ramm, the editor of the magazine behind the petition is happy to run to the media and claim the backing of MPs and councillors, yet he refuses to publish the signatories. Not exactly open and transparent;

Whatever the future of the Charles Kennedy’s leadership is, The Liberal and it’s backers do not come up smelling of roses. Rather like the anonymous anti-Kennedy briefers, the odour is more one of opportunism and desperation.

Fed up of this silliness, I decided to balance it out with some silliness of my own: Ramm Must Go

Key points for Lib Dem supporters to think about:

• David Cameron is just another Tory. He has a very long way to go to take the centre ground of British politics and even further to travel to overlap Lib Dem policy and philosophy.
• Charles Kennedy is not Paddy Ashdown. They both have different styles that happily produce high approval ratings from voters. I am as guilty as the next Lib Dem in judging Charles by Paddy’s criteria. Yet Charles has led the Lib Dems to better and better General Election results. You can’t really fault his performance during these campaigns. Any missed opportunities (i.e.; gaining more seats from Labour and the Tories) are more likely the result of strategic and campaigning errors or the excessive financial campaigning resources of the other parties, not due to Charles.
• To Lib Dem MPs and Peers: if you want a change of leader, anonymous media briefings are not the constitutional method to do it. And they have the nasty side-effect of possibly damaging the party.