Nick Robinson recently wrote a piece for his BBC blog in which he concluded:
“…as Labour nurses its wounds from the worst election results in decades the party today decided to back the leader who took them to defeat”.

I don’t think Robinson got it right. It would be more accurate to say that the Parliamentary Labour Party could not make a decision. It had, quite literally, become petrified. Liberal Democrats don’t petrify quite so easily. Perhaps there have been too many near death experiences to take survival for granted.

After more than a decade of keeping its PLP members on a tight leash NuLabour lacks parliamentarians who are capable of speaking up and speaking out. It has been left in a Micawberesque condition: it cannot respond to the electorate, even though public dissatisfaction with Brown and disillusion with NuLabour has had (and will have) shocking electoral consequences.

What happened in Westminster and the Whitehall village last Thursday should be viewed as another episode in Britain’s longest running political soap opera: British conservatism (small ‘c’). It was evidence, if any more were needed, that the House of Commons, with those ranks and ranks of NuLabour stooges, cannot do reprsentative politics. It is time for a great infusion of new Liberal Democrat blood.