More Lembit news today, but none of it is very good.

First of all, the Western Mail reports that senior Welsh Lib Dem politicians are “snubbing” Lembit in favour of a “little-known candidate from England” (which is apparently a small place somewhere east of the Marches). Yet Lembit is apparently still standing, stating that:

“Party members can vote for whichever candidate they like. It’s called democracy and I support that. Ros Scott may have some supporters in Wales, but I have lots of people backing me in England.

“I believe I am the right person to become president. I am already the senior vice-president and chair meetings of the executive, of which I have been a member for 17 years.

“If people want a president with experience and determination who is inspirational, I believe they should vote for me.

“I travel round Britain to see members of the party all the time, which is why my car has 380,000 miles on the clock.

…

“I am standing in this election not on what I say I will do in the future, but on the record of what I have been doing in the party and will continue to do.”

But in a sign that he is a little irked about his lack of support, how’s this for a pout?

“I have done all the training for candidates within the party since 1990. I remember Kirsty Williams coming to a course I ran in the mid-1990s in the early stages of her career.

“I’m sure she is grateful for the help I gave her.”

Ouch. I’m sure she feels suitably put in her place now. Bloody girls.

Meanwhile, it appears that it isn’t just the Welsh who are less than sympathetic to Lembit’s cause. For the second month in a row he has come bottom of Lib Dem Voice’s Members’ Poll on the Shadow Cabinet:

Sarah Teather -14.6%
Roger Williams -14.6%
Michael Moore -20.8%
Nick Harvey -23.9%
Lembit Opik -35.4%

No Lembit news today, so I thought I would just link to the launch of Kirsty Williams’ campaign to succeed him as Welsh Leader instead.

Spooky. I wrote this post earlier but it disappeared.

For those of you beginning to despair that there is nothing to write about Lembit Opik other than his obsession with odd looking bicycles - rejoice! Lembit’s campaign for President may still be failing to launch (despite the fact that Kirsty Williams is about to launch her campaign months before her election is due to take place), but at least we may now have an explanation.

Eagle eyed readers of the Guardian this morning have pointed out that in their handy guide to the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, one of the vital components is called a “Lembit Opik decay hole facilitator.” Even more intriguingly, operating the LHC appears to be dependent of a “mouth harp” and “kazoo.” Lembit is of course a dab hand with such instruments (it is a little known fact that Lembit performed the harmonica solo in Culture Club’s Karma Chameleon).

So, clearly Lembit has had other more important things to worry about than mere internal elections for Federal Party President. And can I just say that, given the possibility that the LHC might wipe out a major section of this quadrants of the galaxy, I can’t think of a single person I would rather trust with its operation?

Today is the day of the great Segway protest.

Risking his personal freedom to take a stand on this vital issue of civil liberties, Lembit and a couple of Tories drove a couple of hundred yards on a two wheeled scooter, which a typically understated Lembit described as “the biggest step forward in transportation since the Wright brothers.” He forgot to mention that none of the Wright brothers’ inventions have ever been allowed on Britain’s roads either.

The stunt has generated Lembit, and thus the party, a massive amount of publicity. Londonist states “We salute Mr. Opik for bringing this urgent issue to the attention of our government,” while Kerron Cross says of Lembit’s desire to get arrested: “I, for one, hope that Her Majesty’s finest don’t disappoint dear old Lemsip.” Yes, the level of support and goodwill this protest has generated is tangible.

Is there really nothing else to write about Lembit Opik other than bloody Segways? Sheesh! It even makes it in a leader in the Independent today!

Fortunately, Jeremy Hargreaves is on hand to provide some analysis:

Would electing Lembit as President “split the party”? No, I think that’s going a bit far. But, given where people are now, I do think that the party in the country effectively imposing Lembit as President on people who actually have to work with the person in that role, would be highly divisive. And once settled into post, it wouldn’t necessarily get easier - see for example how uncomfortable many Welsh party members were with having the Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats having the celebrity profile that Lembit had.

All is quiet on the Opik front as we enter day six of the race to be Lib Dem party president. The media is still getting excited about his plans to go to prison and genius campaign slogans but of new stories, we have nothing.

So we are left to go back to YouTube. Here, it is revealed that Lembit is one of the very few people who actually watches Big Brother 9 (is it still going on?):

If Lembit can show this much passion for something as dull and uninteresting as a beauty contest on Big Brother, just think what he’ll do with the Lib Dem Presidency!

Still no sign of the Lembit for President campaign. However, I do feel that I have been a little unfair. Lembit has, in fact, been preparing this campaign by raising his profile in the mass media. A winning formula, since far more members watch the telly than read boring old political blogs. Even better, he appeared this year on Comic Relief’s Celebrity Apprentice. Here is Lembit demonstrating the sort of negotiation and management skills that he will need as Federal President of the Lib Dems:

It has to be said that not only is Ros Scott’s website quite impressive in its own right, it is streets ahead of anything any of the leadership candidates have come up with in the last two elections (admittedly, given the time she’s had to prepare compared to them, that isn’t exactly surprising). It’s uncluttered and simple. My only comment is that the menu bar could do with looking a bit more like a menu bar.

Where is Lembit? Will he bottle it like last time (when I would have enthusiastically campaigned for him against the incumbant)?

That’s Iain Dale’s rather improbable analysis, over a series of increasingly aerated posts this weekend, based on the fact that, erm, a lot of people on the left are talking about her surprise nomination in its immediate aftermath. Who’dathunkit? The most surprising political event in months has happened and people are actually talking about it? They must be pooing themselves!

More hilarious is Iain’s transformation into a feminist, citing Peter Hitchens as a fellow traveller. According to Iain and Peter, the left hates women because the left like anti-women policies such as abortion. Genius analysis there. Suddenly, the brains behind “it’s DD for me!” has become super-concerned about how sexist the coverage of Sarah Palin is in the sunday papers. Funny that I don’t recall him having similar concerns about the media’s portrayal of Harriet Harman, Jacqui Smith and Hillary Clinton.

As for the claim that “[the left] cannot stand it when a black person becomes famous as a Conservative - remember Ray Lewis?” - it wasn’t the left that took down Ray Lewis but the Church of England. And despite having defended him here in the past, what I’ve heard since suggests that they were right to do so. Can’t Iain think of a better example of the left’s alleged racism? And you simply can’t imply that Ray Lewis must be innocent on the basis of his skin colour (and political views), and expect to be taken seriously, whilst simultaneously writing this.

Speaking personally, I think appointing Sarah Palin was a mistake which smacks of panic. I think Iain thinks that too, given that a week ago he was citing Mitt Romney as a dead cert. Iain’s subsequent attempts to tar Obama with the Palin inexperience brush simply doesn’t wash: she has been governor of one of the US’s smallest (population-wise - Alaska has roughly the same population as Glasgow) and certainly most isolated states for two years.

Her appointment comes across as too calculated - to be blunt, she ticks far too many boxes. It is too ‘cute’. And many of these boxes are mutually exclusive - how many disaffected Hillary supporters are likely to be wooed by a shootin’, fishin’ and anti-abortion candidate? How many sanctity of marriage obsessives are likely to be convinced that a woman with five children is fit for the job? They certainly have the anti-corruption line in common, but if I were running McCain’s campaign I’d be worried that she reminds voters about what McCain is not, and not in a good way. Do the democrats really need to do more than show the screen of a heartbeat monitor superimposed with her face to get their point across?

I didn’t read any of the allegedly sexist stuff out there about Sarah Palin this weekend, but I did read a perceptive piece by Michael Crowley in the Observer. However much they might try to keep open the rapidly healing Clinton-Obama wound, it is the Republicans who are divided in this election, not the Democrats. Sarah Palin’s appointment on Friday very briefly looked like a masterstroke, but the shock of the new is already diminishing and she has just been dropped in at the deep end. Things like the Daily Kos’ allegations over the maternity of her fifth child may be unfair (the picture of her daughter Bristol does look incriminating but I’m not so sure that the pictures of Palin herself are that convincing - Alaskans tend not to walk around in bikinis in spring), but surely in this post-Rove era no McCain supporter can really convincingly put on the ingenue act? After eight years of humiliation, the Democrats are in to win this thing and at the moment Palin looks like a pretty big target. They might cross the line occassionally, but going for the kill is not a sign of desperation, but rather indicate that the gloves have come off at last. And based on Iain’s rather hysterical reaction, the right just won’t be able to take it.

If you turned up to give a speech, and 80,000 people started waving placards at you with the word “CHANGE” on them - wouldn’t you think about possibly putting on a different shirt?