It is Civil War!

For the Liberal Democrats anyway. And civil war for the Liberal Democrats is like civil war in the Shetland Islands: terrible for those involved, but the rest of the world struggles to give a fuck.

Still, it is nice that the Liberal Democrats are again getting some of the limelight. After all, the only really get attention when they ditch one of their leaders with all the dignity of a Tory peer wiping tramp scat off his shoe. Perhaps this has all been part of Clegg's plan: to win column inches by getting people-whose-names-I-can't-remember-despite-looking-at-the-above-link -just-moments-ago to resign.

Those who might describe the Liberal Democrat resignations as a political earthquake are actually describing the political equivalent of the Lincoln earthquake: terrifying and unsettling to those involved, but everyone else fails to see what has happened at the same time as wondering what all these strange people are doing on the news when we actually had no real idea they ever existed.

See, the Liberal Democrats are the third party in this country. They are also about as politically important as a discarded flyer from the 2005 election. They don't really matter. They remain a forum of those who play at political power.

I appreciate the immediate irony of someone who has just joined the very definition of a minor party dissing the Lib Dems for being irrelevant. But they are. Seriously, they have had their go, and they should just fuck off. They used to be a major force in UK politics. Of course, that was around the time of the First World War, and when they were a different party called something different. Since then, on every occasion when they have had the opportunity to become the opposition in the UK (again - like 1983 or 2001) they have taken the opportunity, and pissed it up the wall. They seem incapable of doing anything other than cannibalising their own leaders every couple of years, and should really step out of the lime light. So I say, "Go on, Senior Lib Dem leaders. Go on. Go and do whatever it is former Lib Dems do. Like work in a call centre. Or push trolleys around a supermarket car park. Or wipe the dribble off grannies in a home. Just go and do something else. Your time has been and gone. And stop crying, Chris Huhne. We know you never got your time as leader. That's because you are odious."

Of course, there is not a hope in hell that the Lib Dems will actually do as I ask, particularly if the next election creates a hung parliament. Then you will see that insufferable prig Nick Clegg prancing his way across our TV screens, wielding the sort of power that no pompous twit should ever have. Part of me almost wishes that is there is a hung parliament that Gordon Brown and David Cameron reach some sort of accord*, and elect to support each other if only so they can rub Liberal Democrat faces in just how much of an irrelevance they are.

Of course, such a union will never happen. But let us always dream of the Liberal Democrat disappearing (even further) up their own arseholes, and vanishing altogether, leaving the way clear for a genuinely radical third party. It is a long shot, but it is worth hoping for...

*I don't actually wish for this, as it might keep that total fucking bastard Gordon Brown in power. And that is in the Top 10 of worst case scenarios. Right after viral apocalypse.