Lord Bonkers' Diary: Lord Acton on Lembit Opik

Another visit to Rutland's most celebrated fictional peer...

I am often asked what accounts for the sad demise of Lembit Opik. Having contrived to lose a seat that we Liberals had held for all but four of the last 130 years, he was last heard of filming a “reality moving television” series with Michael Barrymore, whose once-stellar career went into sharp decline after [redacted] the shallow end. I fear this will do nothing to restore his credibility (Barrymore, I mean, obviously).

But what, as I say, accounts for Opik's demise? I feel Lord Acton, at whose feet I sat as a very young man, put his finger on the explanation when he wrote: “All Powys tends to corrupt; absolute Powys corrupts absolutely.”

Earlier this week

• The truth about [redacted]
• Muscular Liberalism
• Fox, elf or seal?

SWP leading light is Lord Acton's great grandson

A corking Trivial Fact of the Day. It turns out that the Socialist Workers Party's leading theorist Alex Callinicos is the great grandson of the great Liberal historian Lord Acton.

I am endebted to Dave Osler on Liberal Conspiracy for the lead. Osler says that Callinicos is Lord Acton's grandson, but a little research shows that he is in fact his great grandson.

Alex Callinicos's mother was the Hon. Ædgyth Bertha Milburg Mary Antonia Frances Lyon-Dalberg-Acton. She was the daughter of Richard Lyon-Dalberg-Acton, 2nd Baron Acton. And he in turn was the son of John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton.

Lord Acton, as the first baron is usually known, was often quoted by the radical Young Liberals of the 1960s. He is best remembered today as the originator of the maxim:

All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.