Eleanor Burnham may want to look away now.
Lembit Opik assures me that he won't be stepping down as leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats despite his promotion to the business brief at Westminster.
Apparently the Welsh Lib Dems elect their leader after every general election and unless Gordon Brown goes to the polls shortly Opik plans to stay in the job.
This may come as a blow to Burnham, the North Wales AM with leadership ambitions. A brief lapse in vocabulary ("the Japs" episode) is unlikely to destroy those ambitions.
There may yet be an election closer to home - there usually is with the Lib Dems' "hyper-democracy".
The leader of the Lib Dems in the National Assembly is elected within a year of every Welsh Assembly election.
Will the long-serving Mike German, having failed to take his party into government after the May elections, really be up for four years of hard grind as the leader of the Assembly's smallest group?
Would anyone else really fancy the job? Don't all rush at once.
Perhaps Ms Burnham will have to be patient and wait for Opik's retirement.
Perhaps not. He assures me he will stay in the job but four years is a long time in Lib Dem politics.
Time to get the phone lines into campaign HQ> Did I just see Eleanor Burnham ringing BT?
1 comment:
wait until Sian lloyds all revealing book comes out ....... that may change his mind. Or a any media job offer (tongue firmly in cheek here)
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