I pay a visit to Liberal doyen Sir Cyril Smith at his home in Emma Street, Rochdale. He's a bit frail now, and very much lighter than in his heyday as Liberal chief whip. "What do you think of this Le Pen business, should he be allowed to chair the first session of the new Parliament?", I ask. "Let him do the job," says Cyril, "it's only a bit of ceremony. If he starts going on someone can always move a vote of no-confidence."
"One way around the problem would be for a party to put up a candidate who is a bit older than Le Pen," I say. "What about you standing on the Liberal Democrat list in the North West? You could chair the first session of Parliament, then resign. There would be no by-election and I could step into your shoes."
Cyril's eyes lit up. "Where will the Parliament be meeting?" he asks. When I say it is in Strasbourg his enthusiasm appears to diminish.
Still, maybe it's an idea worth pursuing.
I get back to my office and check the dates. Alas, Cyril is 8 days younger than Le Pen, so no deal.
3 comments:
What a clever idea. Why didn't I think of that?
Thank you for pursuing this idea. It should be a relatively simple task to defeat Le Pen this time.
Hmm...big Cyril is actually not very Liberal, has a huge ego and is pretty right wing. I'm surprised at you for going in for this ego stroking crawling.
An incredibly unwise blog entry that could come back to haunt you Mr Davies.
Surely you know about Cyril?
As MEP for the region and someone involved in politics for a long time, surely you know all about Cyril Smith, the way he operates and the extremely serious allegations made about him?
Surely?
In the Rochdale Observer Cyril is now making reference to Norman Scott.
Either a Fraudian Slip or something more sinister?
Cyril Smith is not and has never been a "liberal"
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