Oct 16 2007
Sir Menzies let the hurt show
The former Lib Dem Leader’s short letter and refusal to grant interviews shows how hurt he is. His immediate resignation demonstrates a fit of pique. Any normal person who made his own decision to step down would have said to his party I will remain as Leader until a new Leader has been elected, and then hand over in a friendly and helpful way. Instead Sir Menzies went back to Scotland to nurse his hurt,leaving Vince Cable to hold the ring. The more Cable and Hughes deny they plunged in the knife, the more their words in recent interviews will be played back when they failed to support their Leader to the hilt in his hour of need.
Watching Cable last night on Newsnight he manged to look both guilty and ambitious. His guilt stems from his devastating lunchtime interview yesterday when he told us - without knowing his Leader’s intention to give up - that the leadership was up for discussion. Hardly the words of a loyal Number 2 trying to buttress his boss, more the words of someone trying to give the final push to a Leader worrying about his lack of support.
Cable’s ambition was written all over his face when the interviewer put to him that he might be a candidate. He made a poor fist of concealing his thought that maybe he could convert the temporary Leadership into the real thing. All he had to do was to say that by accepting the caretaker leadership he was ruling himself out from the Leadership race, but he could not bring himself to say that. It gets the Leadership election off to a bad start when the man holding the ring as temporary Leader may want to be a candidate, and underlines how unhelpful Menzies rapid departure was. The other candidates would have a right to feel aggrieved if the acting Leader became a candidate, as he would have the advantage of the Lib Dem office and press machine behind him in his role as Acting Leader.
Little groups of excited and worried Lib dems are huddled all round the Palace of Westminster today, seeing who has seven friends to launch a bid. The rest of us can sit back and enjoy this little battle, which has got off to such a rancorous start.
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
John, who in your opinion out of the leadership contenders is the most likely to do a deal with Labour in the event of a hung parliament? I remember Charles Kennedy saying he would not prop up an unpopular Labour government but would he hold to that? Would the others? The Liberals always seem so fickle and as you say are poll driven. Are there any candidates who would be favourable to Conservatives, if that isn’t too much of a paradox?
Reply: I do not think any of them would want to do a deal with the Conservatives. I guess they would be keen to do a deal with anyone in a hung Parliament based on division of spoils rather than principle, but are unlikely to say that before the event.