Sir Menzies Campbell comes out

Calm yourself, Elspeth, I am talking about Ming's speech today.

I was pleased that he tackled the issue of his age head on. The BBC site says:

Sir Menzies, 66, said he would "absolutely" make his age an issue in the battle with Mr Brown and Tory leader David Cameron.

"Politics would benefit from more people with experience," he said in a speech to party staff.

"If more experienced politicians had taken the decisions, we might not be mired in the conflict that we see in Iraq today."

This must surely be a better approach than the attempts to "put the zing into Ming" that I complained about in the Guardian last year.

I have used a chess metaphor when discussing Lib Dem leadership matters before, so let's try another.

There is an old Russian proverb that their chess writers were fond of quoting: "He who says A must say B." They used it in the sense that if you had, say, committed yourself to an attack then you had to carry on with it when things got difficult, perhaps by sacrificing material, rather than look for an easy way out.

So having elected an older leader, the Liberal Democrats have to make the best of his qualities not pretend that he is something he isn't.

Or as Shirley Bassey sang at Glastonbury:

Life's not worth a damn till you can say, hey world,
"I am what I am."