Who should be our leader? Every Lib Dem is thinking about it, but I suppose I have more reason than many for giving it the most careful consideration.

After all, as I am candidate in what my local team has turned into our top marginal in the country – Oxford East – the person we elect is likely to become my boss. Of course, if Mr Brown had let us have the election most were expecting and some, like myself, were hoping for, I might be there now. As it is, my team and I are ready for that battle, whenever it occurs – but we know that who our next leader is will help shape our destiny over the next few years.

It is, of course, too early for me to endorse any candidate: as I write, only one has declared formally and while others have ruled themselves out, there remain others to rule themselves in. Let me say: I liked Charles and I liked Ming – we owe them both a huge debt of gratitude. Whoever follows them will have both to live up to their achievements and to take us to a further level of success.

What I can give you at the moment is the view from Oxford East – the issues I’m hearing on the doorstep and the issues where we have the policies and should be shouting them from the rooftops.

For me, there are four key issues – the three Hs and the Environment. The Hs are Housing, Health and Human Rights, or civil liberties. These are unashamedly issues that matter in my constituency but there ones on which we need to make our national voice heard.

Oxford – affluent, leafy Oxford – has a real housing crisis, with thousands on the council waiting list and many more priced out of the market. We, unlike the other parties, have radical solutions to real problems – land auctions, community land trusts – we need now to sell them in the national arena. Oxford is both a international centre of medical research and a regional hub of health provision.

We, in our party, are rightly proud of the NHS, but there must be something desperately wrong when I meet good, dedicated staff who have been made redundant: people are crying out to hear how we can ensure that control of our NHS is exercised by local people, not by central government diktat?

And Human Rights – which might not score high in opinion polls but, believe me, count in naturally liberal cities like Oxford. We should pay credit to Ming for standing up and condemning Labour’s attack on civil liberties. When the next election comes, I’ll be proud if our new leader makes this a key battleground.

I must admit, though, it’s probably the Environment that most exercises me: our championing of green issues is one of the qualities that brought me in to the party in the first place, almost 20 years ago. Here in Oxford, homes were ruined during the floods last summer; further thousands of people, myself included, escaped grief by the narrowest of margins.

Global warming is a reality, and many of the public realise that: so how do we turn that recognition into positive support for our environmental policies? How, above all, do we ensure that people appreciate that the Lib Dems are the only realistic option for the millions of people who care about our planet?

So there you are, Nick, Chris, and anyone else who chooses to contest the leadership: four issues crying out for us to show leadership and commitment. How would you ensure that we make those issues unambiguously ours over the coming months and years?

* Steve Goddard is the Liberal Democrats’ prospective parliamentary candidate for Oxford East. He missed out on being elected by just 963 votes in 2005.