A YouGov poll in December 2002 found that 51per cent of the electorate thought the Lib Dems were “likely to overtake the Tories in the next five years”, and only 44 per cent thought this “unlikely”. This view has receded since Michael Howard became Tory leader, but not entirely. Most of the possible successors to Howard – who will inevitably lose the next election – are as bizarre as IDS.There is a problem, however, with this path. The paradox of the Lib Dems is that if they want to make electoral gains, they can only do so from the right of Labour, yet most of their activists, their MPs and their supporters in the media viscerally oppose Blair from the left. Instead, alas, they were nobody’s issues, and Kennedy receded back into the drawing rooms of Westminster.Part of Kennedy’s problem stems from the fact there are two possible ambitions for the Lib Dems today, and they are not compatible. Can you think of a single interesting thought, resonant phrase or intriguing speech in the past five years? Has he nudged at public opinion a single time?I disagree with Kennedy on the war, but it was extremely important for our democracy that one of our parties should take a strong, clear line against the conflict.

So it is with real sadness that we turn to Charles Kennedy’s record. We need a party shouting that asylum-seekers are not a cancerous menace to our civilisation but desperate, tyrannised people who will enrich our country if we give them the chance. We need a party that points out how Britain will suffer damaged competitiveness and slashed political influence while we stay isolated from the euro.An articulate Lib Dem leader can be one of the most exciting forces in British politics, because he (or she) is freed from the constant competition for the middle ground that afflicts the main parties. We need a party committed to telling the truth about tax: that if we want European-quality public services we need to pay European-sized sums to the Exchequer. And in most part it was because, positively oozing polymorphous perversity herself, she not surprisingly turned up in a few of the most perverse films ever to have been produced in Hollywood.Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar, Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Suddenly, Last Summer: if these ostensibly dissimilar films have anything in common, it is in what lies below their surfaces, the undercurrents of degeneracy, the vibrations of sadism and all the venomous desires, practices and repressions that seem about to explode in our faces.

Kennedy has been – at best – semi-engaged with British political life since he became Lib Dem leader.
Britain needs the Liberal Democrats. Yes, but these disappearing acts are significant because they are symbolic of a wider truth. For two of the biggest parliamentary events of the past year – the announcement on the euro and this week’s budget – Charles Kennedy has been ill. It’s tempting to paraphrase Oscar Wilde: to miss one of the most significant events in town is a misfortune, but two begins to look like carelessness You might reply: so what? We all get ill sometimes.

Having been harangued for years by frontbench maniacs on Labour’s generosity in office, this made me laugh like Barry Sheerman.simoncarr75 independent.c.uk
More from Simon Carr. A minister responded by saying that the Tories had cut spending by 30 per cent in a decade The two propositions aren’t mutually exclusive, of course. Mr Collins claimed it was the historic role of the Tories to make the privileges of the rich available to the rest (unkind laughter).Mr Grayling, constituting 50 per cent of the backbench presence (odd for a frontbench spokesman) made three compelling interventions. First: Why was it that when the Government made cuts in public spending it was “a prudent efficiency drive”, but when opposition parties made the same proposals they were “savage cuts in frontline services”? Second: Why does the Government approve of money following the patient in the NHS – but not in education? There was no answer to this either.And most sensationally, he claimed Labour’s cornucopia of spending on education has been lower than every year of the last Tory governments.