Just floating an idea prompted slightly by a throw-away comment at the Not-the-first-hustings on Saturday about the dark days of the dual leadership of the two Davids...

Why not have two leaders? Many people have commented that Chris is good on policy and strategy and Nick on presentation. On a personal level I find Chris has the sort of presence that would lend itself to armchair conversations persuading groups of our ideas (not unlike CK) and Nick the big platform speaker. We need both roles. And I still think that one weak area for Nick is economic/fiscal policy where Chris outshines most others and, whilst any new leader will be ably assisted in this area by Chris and Vince, fiscal policy in particular is going to be absolutely top of the agenda for a while to come so would benefit from being within the leadership.

Granita isn't quite the right analogy of course, as there it was about succession. But out of it came Gordon Brown the strategist and Tony Blair the front man. And, whether we like them or not, it was quite a successful double-act. Maybe we could have a double act too. I think the era of the two Davids was hampered by the fact that we weren't quite one party and they were still jostling for the upper hand. Now we are matured as a single party (and even attracting some like Michael Meadowcroft back into the fold) maybe we would have the ability to pull it off nowadays.

As James Graham and I note there is a big job of work to be done to bring the wider party into the policy making process and strategic direction of the party. One leader could specialize on that and the other on selling the results to the wider world.