Minging Drains

Ming Campbell "would lead the Party down the drain", former Labour minister and SDP campaigner Dick Taverne told BBC Radio 4's World at One today.

Yes - it would be a former Labour cabinet minister who inserted the final knife and twisted. We seem to be so much better at the Brutus thing than other parties.

Well, the stabbing certainly worked. Helped off the political stage by the Butcher of Bermondsey Simon Hughes and The Multi-Party Member for Rugger HQ Vince Cable, Ming's departure statement even made a seasoned old PR whore like myself blush. Resigned now that there is no election on the horizon and there's enough time for a younger candidate to setp into the shoes. What a load of old Weber Shandwick!

So - the outcome is obvious. The LibDems will implode and we'll snaffle up all of the LibDem voteshare, putting Labour on 49% and the Tories on 41%.

Mind you, there is one highly improbable but slightly worrying alternative.

Maybe someone like Chris Huhne will take over and move the LibDems to the left, to take over the ground that Labour relinquished in the Big Move Right. And with no effective socialist opposition, maybe lots of former Labour Party members will join them and vote for them. Nah! No chance. They'll elect Nick Clegg and he'll spend the next five years standing outside our tent trying to unzip the sheet and crawl onto our centre-right territory.