It's a great shame that the acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, Vince Cable, isn't in the running for the party leadership. He's been doing an excellent job, hitting the headlines with his to-the-point interventions on a range of issues and behaving like the confident leader of an Opposition party.

Meanwhile the two official Lib-Dem candidates, Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg, seem to be concentrating on bitching and sniping at each other and ignoring points of policy - which they largely agree on anyway.

I've no confidence in either of those two to rescue the party from the mess its last couple of leadership decisions have got it into. They're men of very little stature, politically speaking.

Cable, though, has demonstrated that he has a lot of potential. But maybe he has more sense than to take over such a poisoned chalice.