Lembit Opik Unbowed

Lembit Opik, the nation’s favourite anagram, took quite a battering over the weeked; while downpours plagued several parts of the kingdom, he got doused in the Mail on Sunday by the Welsh weatherwoman, Sian Lloyd. Hell has no fury like a woman scorned. But like one of those dolls that you can push over, only to have it bouncing back, Lembit was in fine fettle at the National Liberal Club tonight, when he was the guest speaker at the Barnet Liberal Democrats’ Annual Dinner. He has long been a leading figure in the Northern Irish Estonian Welsh Geordie community in Britain, but now he is in the running for Britain’s best-known opposition politician. He’s a class act, and understands that a sizeable part of the British public is more turned on by cabaret than politics. That doesn’t mean he does not care about serious issues, however, as his work in a number of areas such as motor neurone disease proves. And he has the charming ability to laugh about himself. He could never have been party leader, of course, and in that context he has a record in backing the loser even more spectacular than my own. But he is running for the presidency of the party (which is presumably why is he is on the rubber chicken, or in this case, beef Wellington, circuit), though he was not so gross as to mention this fact tonight. Rather like Heineken, he can reach parts of the body politic that others cannot. Perhaps it is a good thing that the party is now so richly diverse that it has everything from a Cable to an Opik.