Richard Baum

Observant readers will have noticed that commentary on the Lib Dem leadership race on this blog has so far amounted to absolutely nothing. This is for a number of reasons.

First, I reckon it’s pretty boring for people who aren’t Lib Dems. A battle between two people who appear more or less the same, arguing quite nicely about stuff. Obviously I don’t think it’s boring in the slightest, nor do I think that Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg are the same. But I want this blog to be read by normal people, and normal people don’t really care who wins, as long as somebody does and then gets on with the job.

Second, I think that talking about competitions between Lib Dems necessarily means talking about things that divide the party. Which is a silly thing to do on a Lib Dem blog.

Third, any hardened Lib Dem types who stumble upon this blog will know more about the leadership race than me, so if I attempt some big-shot head-to-head comparison they will snigger at my ignorance and get their lucid analysis elsewhere.

And fourth, I really didn’t have anything of substance to say on it… until today.

Because today I received half a dozen postcards from the Nick Clegg campaign in an envelope, which was hugely exciting. Not only has this presented me with photos of Nick Clegg in a variety of poses, but as a fairly avid postcard writer it’s also saved me a trip to Paperchase to buy some more. Marvellous!

I love postcards. In these days of emails and texts, nobody writes anything any more. I can’t remember the last time I received a hand-written letter, and I imagine I get more personal correspondence than most given my role as Councillor. I think it’s a shame. All this instant communication isn’t just generated in seconds, it’s lost almost as quickly as it’s read. My mum kept her love letters from my dad long after the marriage itself had ended in the type of divorce that left me desperate and clingy for five years and leaves me baffled by human relationships to this day. But what do young romantics have these days? 160 characters on a Nokia screen, that’s what. Nothing to show your children and get weepy eyed over.

So I resolved to make the world a more letter-friendly place a while ago, and started sending postcards to people. I never get any back really, which is a mixture of my own deep unpopularity and my friends’ shocking laziness. But I know that most of the ones I send are kept by the people who receive them. and I like to think that in thirty or forty years, something I’ve created will still exist and might make them smile as they remember their bizarre Luddite friend. Which is more than can be said for the emails and texts I send.

So, since I haven’t been to the hustings yet, and since I’ve never met either Nick or Chris, I have nothing special to judge the candidates on other than the fact that Nick Clegg’s team seems to share my liking for the good old Royal Mail and the simple joy of writing things on cards and sending them to people.

For that alone, Nick Clegg has gone into a marginal lead.

Rick