Doomed to obscurity

From the archive, first published Saturday 21st Jan 2006.

AFTER nearly 100 years in the political wilderness, the Liberal Democrats have just signed on for another century of obscurity.

The last time a mainstream party had a pile of laughable obsolescence for a temporary leader was the Tories' Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Sir Alec once famously said - in an attempt to sound like a man of the people - that he had lived near miners all his life. Of course he had - I recall that he frequently rode to hounds above the shafts where those sons of toil laboured their days away.

As far as Charles Kennedy is concerned, I seem to remember another politician by the name of Winston Churchill also had a similar affection for the bottle. The best he could manage was to save Europe from Prussian militarism and lead the British people to triumph over the most monstrous evil the world has ever known.

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