Days of hope

Iain Dale has been waxing lyrical about his time in student politics at the University of East Anglia and lists Caroline Flint, Mark Seddon, former NUS president Vicky Phillips and Tony Blair aide Jo Gibbons among his contemporaries.

Luminaries from my own days in student politics at University College London include the well-known psychiatrist Dr Raj Persaud, who was chair of Labour Club in 1982, Liz Davies, famously blackballed by Blair from becoming a Labour MP, David Quantick, now a respected comedy writer, Greg Wood, now the Guardian's racing correspondent, and the Tory blogger Croydonian, who doesn't remember me.

I learned two important lessons during my time in student politics. The first was that I did not want to pursue a political career, and the second was that Tories are generally nicer people than socialists even though I disagree with them most of the time.

Hang all republicans says Beefy

As a lifelong opponent of capital punishment I naturally disagree with the newly knighted Sir Ian Botham about this, but I have to say I find it refreshing to hear a major celebrity standing up for the monarchy without feeling embarrassed about it.

What now for Ming?

Okay, so I never thought he should have become leader in the first place, but I find myself feeling increasingly sorry for Ming Campbell. His conference speech in Brighton was easily the best of the season, and even contained the best joke - the line about Dave wanting to be Tony but not Maggie, and Gordon wanting to be Maggie but not Tony, and Ming not wanting to be any of them.

But nothing has gone right for Ming since, and the media focus on a potential presidential contest between Gordon and Dave has left him and his party completely marginalised.

Today the news took a fresh turn for the worse. The latest Populus Poll put his party on 12pc of the vote, while Martin Baxter's acclaimed Electoral Calculus site now predicts the Lib Dems will lose all their seats, although Martin's formula does of course not allow for the "incumbency factor."

With Gordon now having seemingly put off the election till 2009, by which time Ming will be 68, it now seems a foregone conclusion that he will fall on his sword sometime between now and next spring, to give a new leader a year to bed himself in before the anticipated May 2009 poll.

If I thought the outcome of all this would be a Chris Huhne leadership, I would be mildly optimistic about the Lib Dems' prospects. But I suspect and fear that the real outcome will be that they choose Nick Clegg.

I've said it a few times before on other people's blogs, but I just can't see the attraction. Clegg is seen as the man who can take Lib Dem target seats off the Tories, but despite having had the sexiest brief on the Lib Dem frontbench for the past 18 months he has hardly set the Thames on fire.

If they are going to choose someone on the right of the party to compete for Tory votes, they would be better off in my view with brainy David Laws, currently an amazing 66-1 with the bookies.

As some wit on PB.com has pointed out, those odds are surely worth taking if only for the fact that it would enable you to sing "I backed Dave Laws, and Dave Laws won" to the tune of a certain Clash number.

Talking Balls

Iain Dale predicts that whenever the next election is held, Ed Balls will play a big part in losing it for Labour. Well, in my view Balls has already played a major role in potentially losing the next election for Labour by talking up the election that wasn't.

Although some are trying to blame Douglas Alexander, it was Balls who went on the Today Programme to suggest that the greater risk for Labour lay in not going to the country this year, and it was this, coming on the day the polls showed an 11pc Labour lead, that really sent all the speculation into the stratosphere.

Why was Balls so keen to have an election, I wonder? Could it possibly be the case that Gordon had promised to make him Chancellor of the Exchequer in the post-election reshuffle, as well as making his missus Yvette Cooper a full member of the Cabinet at last?

I know not. But given that Balls has been not inaccurately described as the Deputy Chancellor for most of the past decade, it seems a reasonable enough supposition to me.

Inheritance Tax

I hate to say I told you so, but....

Blogging v Journalism

For the benefit of anyone who can't be bothered to shell out £9-74 at Politicos for a copy of Iain Dale's Guide to Political Blogging, the article I wrote for it about the journalism-blogging interface can be read on my companion blog, now called Behind the Lines.

The article is also featured on "Best of the Web" on Comment is Free.