Saturday, September 25, 2010

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Revd Hughes pro and contra

I hate to say it, but I fear that being elected Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats has gone to the head of my old friend the Revd Hughes.

Not a day goes past without his issuing a statement saying the party will not stand for this or will not stand for that. Now, I am the first to admit that he is the Soundest of Liberals, but since when did being Deputy Leader make one such a big cheese?

It happens that I was once myself elected as Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party and did not find out about it until a good two years afterwards. Even when I did learn of my rank, I did not go around telling Baldwin to watch his step or Ramsay MacDonald to pull his socks up.

Nobody, I had to remind the Revd Hughes after Divine Service the other day, likes a swank. The time may well have come, I judge, for our Deputy Leader to be elected by the party as a whole and not just our MPs – stout men and, indeed, women as they all are.

That said, I should undoubtedly have put my X next to the Revd Hughes rather than that of that Farron fellow from the Lakes who is, by all accounts, a great admirer of C.S. Lewis. Well, it happens that I knew Lewis, and I always found him Distinctly Odd.

Anyway, I know Farron’s sort: let him into St Asquith’s and in no time he would have sold the pews for firewood, painted over the mural of Nancy Seear Defending her Honour Against the Invading Socialists and got us singing “Shine, Jesus, Shine” while he plays the guitar.

Well, we don’t like That Sort of Thing here in Rutland.

Earlier this week

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