Where oh where, asked Tony Blair at today's Prime Minister's Questions, was the third contender for the Lib Dem leadership, after both Ming Campbell and Simon Hughes had made appearances. The answer was that he - Mark Oaten - was sitting next to me on the set of 91Èȱ¬ Two's The Daily Politics, where more voters could see him!
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Comments
And very relieved he must have been not to be in the House - quite a few of us also saw Ming Campbell and Simon Hughes having "a complete 'mare" at PMQs.
Shame for Mark, then, that his gleeful grin of schadenfreude at Ming Campbell's "David Davis moment" was swiftly erased by his own "Charles Kennedy moment" when Andrew Neil challenged him to respond to the claim by an anonymous Lib Dem MP that "Mark Oaten can be summed up in four words: unlimited ambition, limited ability". "That's not four words" shot back Oaten, proving once again that sometimes there's a very fine line between clever and "doh!".
Unsurprising, in the light of all this, to hear that Chris Who-Hell-He is now considering standing for the leadership, though I fear that claims to the Kennedy succession could be further muddied by the presence on the ballot of Charlie's pal Harvey the Invisible Rabbit.
Was Campbell's performance as bad as the media made out? Just like David Davis speech the media jump on a bandwagon of saying how awful it was etc. Then hype up there favoured candidate in that case Cameron. Campbell gaff was not really that funny but the Commons by it's very nature love to laugh at the sillest jokes etc. Perhaps the media should wait until the Liberal Democrats leadership campaign actually begins.
I also wish shows like the Daily Politics would stop over egging the infulence of David Cameron, he was not responsible for Charles Kennedy's resignation, like the program on Wednesday implied. Kennedy and the Lib Dems had problems long before Cameron was on the scene i.e the poor election results in the 2005 election.
At the start of the week, ministers were touring the country promoting the governments 'Respect' agenda.
Tony Blair's performance was hardly a shining example to us all.
The Liberal Democrats seem to be heading down the road that the Conservatives took last in the last decade. This leadership contest to oust Kennedy will backfire on them, the contenders have none of Kennedy's qualities and probably aren't as popular with the younger voters either. One can see the student vote suffering here.
If the Lib Dems don't go for someone who will appeal to a broad spectrum as opposed to just Liberal Supporters, then unfortuantely, the party will suffer at the polls. Kennedy may have the last laugh after all.
Brown and Cameron must be rubbing their hands together with glee.