Exit Ming into the Scottish mist
THE most popular corner shop in Westminster is the one that sells knives - long handled sharp daggers which can be plunged into the backs of politicians of whom colleagues have found dispensable.
To the cast list in a Wagnerian marathon which started in 1990 of Margaret Thatcher, Neil Kinnock, Sir John Major, William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Howard, and Charles Kennedy, we must now add Sir Menzies Campbell.
His crime? To look and sound like a geriatric, even though he's a "sprightly" 66 with the self-styled "energy, ideas and determination" to lead the Liberal Democrats into the next election and beyond.
Sir Ming made his decision that he could no longer stand the Fleet Street jibes and the recriminations of his colleagues and then jetted back to Edinburgh before a statement on his resignation was made on the steps of the Lib Dems' Cowley Street headquarters within the shadow of the Houses of Parliament.
The award for absolute brass neck goes to Vince Cable, the party's deputy leader. Having taken to the air waves yesterday lunchtime to admit discussions were taking place in the parliamentary party over Sir Ming's leadership but disingenuously adding that his position was not in jeopardy - damning with faint praise in the best traditions of plotting Tories - he then appeared on TV looking po faced to opine: "Politics is a very brutal business."
The patrician Sir Ming wasn't the right leader for the Lib Dems at a time when politics was changing - the demise of Blair and the ascendancy of Gordon Brown and David Cameron. He just could not compete with the new Tory and Labour leaders, and it's doubtful if whoever is chosen as a replacement will be able to lift the Lib Dems out of the electoral abyss into which they have been flung.
If they were so concerned at his age, why elect him in the first place. Don't forget that hee was the man who led the palace revolution against heavy drinking Kennedy. Now he's been done down himself just 20 months later, Kennedy could be forgiven for chortling that poetic justice has be seen to be done..
A brutal business most certainly.Substance over style is the true winner.