Saturday, September 01, 2007

Telegraph: Sir Ming is the problem

The Daily Telegraph today ponders what bloggers have bene discussing for weeks now - the decline, or at the best invisibility, of the LibDems. The biggest selling UK quality paper decides that their problem isn't policy but the leader of the party, and the Telegraph launch quite a ferocious attack on poor old Sir Ming. Some LibDems have had the guts to say what lots more must be thinking - that he simply cannot stand the pace of a general election and hasn't got what it takes to even be the leader in peace time.

However, whereas a few months ago LibDems I know in Norwich were actively talking about having time to dump him as leader, nearly all of them now believe he will lead them into the next poll and the time for change has passed. This is a sad state of affairs for their party. Are they really willing to throw away everything Kennedy achieved because of this one man? It seems to them, and now me, that a bad result is what they have to go through to get rid of him.

This all reminds me of the dying days of the IDS leadership - only then the Tories had the time to allow Howard to heal the party, whilst the LibDems are having their IDS moment on the potential eve of an election.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well this is a distraction from the real Daily Telegraph You/Gov analysis of Lab/Con on policy, in about 16 policy areas such as the economy, NHS, education, energy, environment, housing, employment; the Camservatives were left trailing and shadow boxing on all but 2 policy areas with no real impact on the new Brown government, left just fishing around on issues like immigration for election winning. Remind me: Was not this Michael Howard's last election strategy?

Marvellous!!