He said to me “the place to argue the case for liberalism is within a party with some prospect of attaining real power,” but he fails to recognize the very real contributions we have made, or of the real power we exert using our influence, scrutinizing, analysing and moderating the nuts and bolts of the machine at every level - even to exhaustion.

Will Hutton often argues the polar opposite, that the success of liberalism has been the transformation by these methods of the political, social and economic landscape, although he points out that as good liberals the LibDems will always struggle to claim exclusivity for liberalism, since opportunists are prone to swing between ships as their resolve weakens in the face of events (a retrospective admission perhaps?).

I agree that Jenkins offers the incoherent frustration of an aging individualist talking - he wants recognition and the trappings of office, but he isn’t prepared to make the sacrifices required to gain REAL power - which is probably why he is happy with his relative position as a journalist and isn’t prepared to be judged according to the estimation of the wider electorate.

Maybe Jenkins should get out more, but his occasional fogeyish sexism suggests he should look into his own backyard too.