McDonnell's challenge is not enough

There's a good piece currently running on Labour Home on why the left needs a different challenger from John McDonnell in the leadership election, when it happens.

I broadly agree with this premise, and have posted a comment accordingly, but I may well return to this subject in more detail shortly.

More bad news for Ming

I don't want to become a prophet of doom for the Liberal Democrats, but today's ICM poll putting the Tories on 39pc, Labour on 35pc and the LDs on 17pc makes very grim reading.

As political betting guru Mike Smithson points out, there is now evidence that we are returning to an old-style two-party battle as the prospect of a tight election race in 2009/10 draws closer.

"For the first time in a decade and a half there is just the prospect of a Tory General Election win and it is this that might be keeping Labour stable and squeezing the Lib Dems," says Mike.

Furthermore, things could get worse before they get better. The Guardian's piece on the poll outlines a "nightmare scenario" in which Ming's conference speech bombs, new left-right splits emerge over "Orange Book II," and Charles Kennedy pops up to remind us all he ain't finished yet.

The sole silver lining to all is that Cameron is only four points ahead of Labour whereas he will need to be eight or nine points ahead to win a parliamentary majority under the current system.

Cameron is therefore likely to need to bring Campbell into a Tory-Lib Dem coalition - which would be fine if it wasn't for that the fact that Campbell would much rather go into a coalition with Gordon Brown.

I don't want to harp on - honest - but in the difficult electoral circumstances in which the Lib Dems now find themselves, it seems vital to me that the party has both a clear, distinctive message and a popular, charistmatic leader.

Currently, it has neither.

Oaten makes a wise move

A curious reticence seems to have descended on the Lib Dem blogosphere over the long-overdue announcement by Mark Oaten that he is standing down as an MP at the next election.

Doubtless it stems from that very British desire not to kick a man when he is down, and in some senses I sympathise with that.

In others, though, I think this has been a deeply unsatisfactory episode in terms of the relationship between politicians and the public, and the role of the media in maintaining that relationship.

It was regularly alleged that "the media establishment," or "the Lobby" had kept Charles Kennedy's drinking a secret. Well, likewise, the News of the Screws decided the great British public didn't really need to know the details of what Oaten had been getting up to with rent boys, saying only that it was "too revolting to describe."

I understand their reasons, of course, but in a case such as this, what you then end up with is a situation where the public only gets half the story and is hence not able to make an informed judgement about whether they want someone to represent them.

In this instance, the nature of the "revolting" act is and always was the story, because it is this, rather than the fact that Oaten used rent boys, which would persuade most normal people not to vote for him.

As it is, thanks in part to the blogosphere and its ability to disemminate material such as this, Oaten probably concluded in the end that enough people knew the truth to make his position untenable.

Amidst all the self-delusion that has characterised his career in recent months, including thinking that he could be leader of the Liberal Democrats, he at least deserves to be congratulated for finally recognising the reality of this.

Whither the Lobby?

Guido Fawkes and myself are debating the future of the Lobby System over at the Press Gazette's excellent Discuss Journalism site today.

Basically, Guido thinks it's undemocratic and elitist and should be abolished, while I think that abolishing it would lead to its replacement by something even more elitist and undemocratic. Further contributions, either on this site or the Press Gazette's, are of course very welcome.