According to the news this morning, sixteen thousand people have joined the Conservative Party since David Cameron was elected as its Leader in December 2005. Now, we are told, the party has more members than The Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats put together. This returns us to the situation that had existed prior to the "bad old days" (1992 - 2005) when Conservative Party membership had usually exceeded that of the other major parties individually, by a fair margin.
Should faith in David Cameron prove to be well founded and the Conservatives become a formidable Opposition, then surely must the fortunes of the Liberal Democrats decline. Much will be made, I am sure, of Charles Kennedy's purported "failings" in causing, allowing or not resisting such a decline, but if so, it will be blame wrongly attributed. He remains, as ever, an inherently decent man charged with an almost impossible task of leading a minor opposition party whose overriding aim is to replace, ultimately, either of two much more powerful, considerably better funded organisations, each with millions more core supporters. Perhaps some members of Mr Kennedy's "cabinet" should reflect upon this before engineering his premature removal and taking over his Sisyphean task.