Love and Liberty

Very best of luck to Willie Rennie today in the Dunfermline and West Fife by-election. We'll be up on tenterhooks tonight hoping he wins, and he certainly deserves to.

Unfortunately I've not been well enough to get up there (bah!), but hopefully I'll lose my record of getting to every by-election the Lib Dems have won since late 1991 (including leafletting and canvassing on the orders of some terrible martinet agent called Willie Rennie. No, he was brilliant). My first was Kincardine and Deeside, when I was much younger and painfully thin; in the chilly November wind and rain my main canvassing appeal seemed to be to ladies of a certain age who wanted to mother that nice well-spoken young man who was turning blue on their doorstep. Awwhh. That was a long time ago.

Well done to all the Lib Dems who did manage to get up there and help, especially if they too went blue in the cold wind off the Forth. I'm rubbish at predictions, but I'm sure that whatever the result is, the electorate won't be turning blue tonight (groan). Sorry, Mr Cameron - egg all over your face for a u-turn you didn't mean, and for nothing...