The Liberals begin their conference with the future of Ming the Merciless as the main news item. That Sir Menzies is hardly an inspiring leader is not news, but in the absence of a history of drunkenness, or cavorting with rentboys, or phoning gay chatlines, I guess the fact that Ming is, well, old, is the best our hard working political reporters can come up with at the moment. He is stubbornly refusing to provide any other scandals. Yes, he's a tad boring, and no, he's not good at soundbites, but are those really now good enough reasons to write him off? I have to say that tactically he sometimes seems to be a little inept, but given some of Team Cameron's errors that is not a monopoly position.
One journalist, actually, who was prepared in today's papers to provide more of a fair hearing for Ming, is the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley, whose view is that no leader (not even a mix of Caesar, Churchill and Mandela) would currently be able to do much about the historic Liberal position of being, er, third. But perhaps this week will raise the profile of the third party so much that we start to see it as a potential government. And perhaps Lady Thatcher will be nice about David Cameron.
1 comment:
Ah, conference week in Brighton.
The bizarre surge of Lib Dems through the Brighton Station WH Smiths i work in will keep me amused.
I shall keep an eye out for Ming :D
Interesting fact, the conference goers smoke a lot of Dunhill Internationals and the lady Lib Dem has a leaning for Davidoff cigarettes :D
Whether they buy the most expensive cigarettes just to show off (after all, a political conference is really just speed dating for political people interrupted occasionally by a speech or two) or just because they like being different to everybody else i don't know.
I like to scare them by asking them how the conference is going and such like as they assume nobody else really cares or knows why there's lots of people with yellow bags (amusingly sponsored by the Independent newspaper which is suddenly not very Independent at all) wandering around.
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