I wished to make a statement this afternoon...

Politics "However, it is clear now, that such support is not reflected strongly enough across the parliamentary party in the House of Commons itself. In all of this the interests of the party have to come first. That is where my personal, political and constitutional duty lies. Accordingly, I am announcing today that when nominations open for the leadership of the party I shall not now be putting my name forward. And I am standing down as leader with immediate effect." -- Charles Kennedy resigns and with that The Liberal Democtrats render themselves unelectable.

I haven't written about this affair because I was hoping against hope that the party would eventually do the right thing. When Mr. Kennedy made his statement on Thursday, the reaction should have been to batten down the hatches and offer their support. A united front at a time when the Conservatives are increasingly looking stronger and the Labour Government is weakening, despite the circumstances. As was reflected in his resignation statement, the general public and rank and file supporters still looked favourably upon him as a man and a statesman. Instead, they decided to press the self destruct button with flanks of MPs briefing against him in the media, looking entirely small minded as time and again they spoke against the man who had helped them into their parliamentary seats or their positions as spokespeople for the party, in the Treasury for example.

This places me in the position of having to decide if this is the kind of party I want to vote for. As was commented on by someone just after Christmas, I still stand behind the kind of Liberal values which Charles mentioned in his speech. Principally, if those values mean anything to me, I should still throw my support behind the party regardless. The problem I have is that whichever leader fills his shoes, and it looks increasingly like that will be Sir Menzie Campbell, will not be someone who was a Kennedy supporter and more than likely initiated the whispering campaign which led to his downfall. Are those the kind of values in leadership that I'd be interested in? At this rate I'll voting for the Greens...