I have never bought the idea that Mark Oaten is a dangerous right-winger. The problem with his speech at the Meeting the Challenge hustings last Saturday was that it was almost content free.
A politician who was unusually charismatic could have got away with all that talk of the 21st century. But Oaten never had a chance of embodying the future in the way the young Tony Blair did for the Labour Party.
And James Graham has dealt pretty conclusively with the claims that Oaten is a great civil libertarian or the last Kennedy loyalist.
The events of the past week have confirmed my impression that, in standing for the party leadership, Mark Oaten was fighting at least one division above his natural weight.
So now it is Huhne 1, Campbell 2, Hughes 3.
The disappearance of Mark Oaten from the list gives me the germ of an idea for an Agatha Christie plot: The STV Murders.
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