Clearly I can’t speak for any of the other authors or commentors on LDV, but I can defend my own piece.

“Having a slight brush with mortality should not provoke the reaction that it has done.”

As I’ve said elsewhere, my concern is more about what is to come rather than any one specific ‘incident’ in what has passed. So I didn’t wake up the morning after the local elections and throw my hands in the air wailing “we had a rough election, we’re all doooooomed!”, rather it was just another event which seemed to add weight to my ever hardening position which is that, outrageously talented though he is in the field of Foreign Affairs, he can’t hack it as a party figurehead in a general election campaign, and there’s a danger of major embarrassment. And that is where the real damage will be done.

My standpoint is of somebody outside the party (though since writing the article, I have joined the Lib Dems). What I believe quite passionately is that sometimes organisations have a wider responsibility than that which they clearly owe their members, shareholders, or whatever. I believe that at this moment we desperately need a strong third party, and that the whole country is being done a disservice by the present state of affairs; in much the same way that we were all harmed by Labour going awol in the eighties, and the Conservatives being in disarray during the last two parliaments. If the opposition is weak and ineffective then, in my view, it bears a heavy responsibility for the excesses of the governing party.

Like you, I was not in the least impressed by Charles Kennedy, and so I must admit that I regarded his downfall as a fortuitous event. But speaking as an outsider, I was perplexed and dismayed by the election of Sir Ming, and began to wonder whether it might not be that some of the unreconstructed socialists in the party were simply unable to come to terms with Chris Huhne being a millionaire. For me, Huhne just ticked all the right boxes; Ming ticked hardly any of them. What followed has been exasperating beyond belief.

I cannot share your optimism that things will improve under Gordon Brown. Sir Ming and Brown are friends, and I can’t bear to think of Ming’s attacks at PMQ’s becoming any weaker than they already are. Moreover, Ming has clearly got half an eye on a Lib-Lab coalition post the next election – something which, in my view, would make a mockery of our opposition to the war in Iraq. Brown signed the cheques, remember? And I really can’t see Cameron’s job getting harder either; frankly I think that from hereon in, he’s laughing all the way to the bank.

I’m so sorry we disagree, but I have no regrets.