Gunning 4 Chris

You'll note that I've just put a 'Bloggers4Chris' box up on the blog.

I've blogged at length about why my first and second choices are going to be Chris and Menzies but in summary...

The Lib Dems are portrayed by our opponents as ideologically woolly and not to be trusted on the economy. The other parties are competing on the basis of being the best manager. We need to set ourselves apart and take on our critics by showing that we are 'the ideas party' and that we have a clear and coherent vision of what we want a future liberal Britain to be like.

Chris has excellent credentials both as an economist and also devising some of the party's most innovative and liberal ideas (e.g. the Huhne report). He also has experience as a journalist and can communicate our ideas to the media - a third party is not guaranteed to be listened to by the press.

He's said very sensible things about the fallacy of the endless media debates on our left/right positioning:

"I don't think it's useful to be talking in left/right terms when you are looking at liberal issues where we are very distinct from both the Conservatives and from Labour..."

About avoiding increasing absolute taxation and the environment:

"Of course, if we put green taxes up, other taxes can and should come down."

And about the highly centralised state.

The rest is further down the blog...