Mark Oaten and Hello! magazine

The Independent on Sunday reported yesterday that:

The wife of the disgraced Liberal Democrat MP Mark Oaten is to tell her story about the "rent boy" revelations that led to her husband's downfall.

In a concerted effort to rehabilitate the couple personally and politically, Belinda Oaten will write an article for Hello! magazine detailing the fall-out from her husband's affair with a male prostitute.

Both Iain Dale and James Graham are right when they say that the last thing Mark Oaten should do is become involved with Hello! The strategy most likely to redeem him in the eyes of the voters is to concentrate on being a good MP for Winchester for the next few years.

It is important to remember what the case against Mark Oaten is. It is certainly not anything he got up to with rent boys. Before history gets rewritten, it should be remembered that his leadership bid had fallen apart before the revelations in the News of the World.

It fell apart because he was able to win the unqualified backing of only one of his fellow Lib Dem MPs (step forward Lembit Öpik, for it is he). And his speech at the London event which saw the first leadership hustings was almost content free.

Nor was Oaten the dangerous right-winger that some painted him. Those who identify great ideological dividing lines within the Liberal Democrats are in danger of making the party sound more exciting than it really is. Certainly, Oaten's chapter in the Orange Book was a sensible but uninspired call for more education in prisons. Everyone believes in that these days.

True, Oaten was the leadership candidate favoured by some ambitious young PR types who were more pro-market than most Lib Dems. The mystery is why they hitched their cart to such an obviously inadequatee beast. Perhaps no one else would have them.

Oaten was not a success as shadow home secretary either. By his own admission he is not a good Commons performer, and when he accepted the government argument that there is a simple trade off between civil liberties and security he had lost the debate before it had begun. He had already been promoted beyond his obvious level of competence.

I wish the Oatens well and hope that Mark continues as MP for Winchester. But the idea that he represents a lost leader brought low by a tragic weakness is nonsense.