@ Steve Garner – given your leader’s comments on women in the cabinet today, do you have any views relevant to the discussion? (To mirror your snide aside, I’ll just point to Andrew Lansley’s comments on health spending and snigger)

My guess is that she is simply using a political example to talk about an issue which is something that she regards as a generally good idea – job sharing. This is often the case with people’s opinions – being generally in favour of an idea but somehow rather less in favour of actually doing it themselves (to borrow a theme from the post office closure thread). It’s easy enough to say “wouldn’t a job share have been a good idea” when there’s absolutely no prospect of there being a leadership election in which this scenario might arise.

That said, there are probably plenty of scenarios where job sharing does make sense, and I can’t fault Susan Kramer’s support of the general principle.

Also in tactical terms, if I may speak cynically, I think it would have been the wrong thing, too much of an “alt” stick to beat us with unless we had fantastically and obviously good reasons for preferring SK and whoever over anyone else. Which I think in this instance I personally wouldn’t have.

Speaking as one who believes in capitalism with a social conscience, your party ought to be more concerned about why this principal is no longer best represented by the Tories.

If you start with ‘cameleon’ and ‘changing with the wind’ this will give you a head start on your fellow conservatives.

Leadership is exactly that, a singular focal point to rally around on policies, causes and issues.

To dilute the leadership would lead to splits, favouritism and utimately a return to the wilderness for our party.