David Cameron follows in the footsteps of Benjamin Disraeli

I had resolved on no account whatever to return to the theme of the Tory leader, David Cameron, this week. Other issues looked more pressing. The decision by Liberal Democrat MPs to destroy Charles Kennedy only months after he had led them to their most impressive general election result in three quarters of a century is an instance of black ingratitude with few parallels in recent political history. It cries out for an explanation.

Kennedy does not merely deserve some credit for his electoral success. It weighs greatly in his favour that he is one of the disturbingly small number of British politicians to have made a public issue out of claims that Britain has been complicit in the shameful policy of ‘extraordinary rendition’, an American euphemism for the extraction of information from prisoners by dispatching them to countries which practise torture. The government maintains that it knows nothing of this latest accretion to the worldwide outsourcing business.