The Perfect Excuse

Charles Kennedy

I was quite sad to see Charles Kennedy resign aswell. I think it was clear he had messed up the last few days tactically, I don’t see the logic of admiting to being an alcoholic and then requesting a leadership contest, but I still felt sorry for the guy. His ending statement was very dignified I thought, Mark Oaten nearly started crying afterwards outside it was quite moving…

It looks like Menzies Campbell is the frontrunner to succeed him. I can’t really say I know enough about the other potentials (Oaten, Simon Hughes etc), I’d be up for Lembit Opik but I think he’s said he won’t run! nevermind.

So yeah bit of a tragedy for the Lib Dems, but I think it really had to be done. Kennedy wasn’t going to take them any further, he didn’t exactly perform perfectly at last years General Election (remember that interview where he got confused about the 50% tax rate that he was championing at the time?) and probably should have won the Lib Dems a few more seats. Although to be fair, a lot of that was down to the Lib Dems losing out through lack of proportional representation. I think they got about 21% of the vote, but like 10% of the seats in Parliament…