Ferrets in a yellow sack
I was wrong. When after the last general election Michael Howard put in place a long leadership process I thought it would be disastrous. During the 1990s the Conservative Party was irredeemably associated with lack of unity and I thought it would all flare up again. It did not. It was an extraordinarily civilised process. David Cameron has led the party to new levels of popularity, whilst David Davis has been an exemplary Home Office spokesman.
Now it is the turn of the Liberal Democrats. Yesterday I uncharacteristically turned on the lunch time TV to witness the most vicious verbal punch up I have ever seen between two colleagues from the same Party. Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg were at each others throats like Neapolitan fishwives. It was breathtaking.
Many Liberal Democrat voters are decent people who have voted this way because they do not like confrontational politics. I hope that very few were watching this most unedifying spectacle. The two contestants clearly detest each other.