LibDems should wake up and smell the coffee

Don't very often have the time to read the Times. On the train home today the 3 hour journey from North Wales gave me one of those rare opportunities. Daniel Finkelstein article jumped out at me. Ming, you’re useless. You’ ve got to go The Lib Dems must grasp the brutal truth. Thought wow a journalist actually writing the truth as a political observer.

For Ming just doesn’t work. He sounds and looks feeble and past it. His Commons performances are weak, his television soundbites limp. He hasn’t given his party any sense of direction. When Gordon Brown tried to mug the Libs by putting Paddy Ashdown in the Cabinet without offering policy concessions, Ming said he needed to think about it overnight. He has got to go.

And anyone who isn’t a signed-up Lib Dem activist can see it. Indeed, most of the signed-up activists can see it too. At the last election the Lib Dems pushed the Tories into third place among the under 35s. Now the Tories are 7 per cent ahead among this group.
There are, of course there are, arguments for keeping Ming. But not one of them really stacks up.

The first is the idea that Ming will come good. When people get to see Ming in the election campaign they will take to him. Oh. No. They. Won’t.

Daniel Finkelstein may hate everything the Lib Dems stands for but as much it may hurt, his article has hit the nail on the head.

But that is a problem for those of us who do want to see the Lib Dems do well. The bells that toll the tone of warning have been sounding their clang for a long time now. The truth that dare not speak his name is evidently being paraded in front of us every time Ming manages to get a TV or radio interview.

The hypocrisy of many LibDem activists is that whilst they secretly talk behind closed doors, in public they close ranks pretending the opposite. Likewise in blogosphere, there are hardly any Libdems who have even got the bottle to stand up and be counted - to say it as it is. They're living in Cuckoo land. Everybody is so anxious to climb the greasy pole, they're afraid to say boo to a goose in case they get an official kick up the backside. It's really sickening to read posts continually patting each other on the back again and again and again.

Well the General Election is looming - Many are hoping it will all turn out OK on the day. Can't see it myself - sadly I fear a disastrous outcome for the party.