Oh No, What's Happening To Me ?

I'm slightly shocked to be writing this, but I'm starting to re-evaluate the Liberal Democrats as a national party.

For a long time I've had them down as a Labour clone who tacked a "liberal" label on the end of their tax-rising, EU-loving agenda. Under Paddy Ashdown they were pompous and self-righteous, under Charles Kennedy they were irrelevant. But with Menzies Campbell at the helm, they are starting to cut a new authority.

Campbell's call yesterday for a troop pull-out in Iraq may have merits, for all I know. I'm not close enough to the appalling action to be able to judge. But his assertion that we, as a nation, should be big enough to acknowledge that the occupation of Iraq has been a failure reeks of nothing but common sense and a grown-up ability to examine events in an objective light. David Cameron should do the same.

While we're on Iraq, let's not forget that the Liberals were the only party in England who had the balls to stand up before the invasion and say that it was all going to go horribly wrong.

I could never vote for the Lib-Dems because I wouldn't trust them on tax, their supposed love of political and social freedom is not backed up with a genuine desire for a free-market economy and they'd love to hand everything over to Europe anyway. And locally they still appear to be the small-minded, petty, scheming opportunists that they always were, doing almost anything within the political process if it means they get more votes. But Menzies Campbell does at least have my ear.

Now that's scary.