Saturday, June 09, 2007

With friends like Judith Lubbock...

It seems that Hereward Cooke's fulsome apology for LibDem lies in the local elections isn't quite what it seems.

For now fellow frontbencher Cllr Judith Lubbock appears to have stabbed him in the front - and said she won't apologise for the LibDem fibs.

She said in the EDP:
“The buck stops with me, and I don't apologise. We can back up what's been put in the literature. If he had [told her he would say sorry], I would have said 'hang on a minute what are you apologising for? I do not want to undermine his position. Hereward, bless him, just thinks you can draw a line under these things. I was responsible for those leaflets and I certainly stand by them. We certainly won't be having any review of our literature.”

So, what do we make of that? Two things really. Firstly that the vicious lies that make up most of the LibDem Focus leaflets will continue with Lubbock in charge. And secondly Cooke's leadership is now pretty much untenable. He lost the trust of his backbenchers ages ago and now it seems that he has lost the trust of his frontbench.

Hereward will, of course, hang on until he can say that he went when he wanted to. But the pressure is on and the LibDems won't have real, clear leadership until he has gone.

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