I wouldn't have accepted Lord Rennard's apology – but then he shouldn't have made it

Shirley Williams has a point when she says that Lord Rennard’s alleged harassment of four female Lib Dem colleagues was very small beer compared with the sexual abuse attributed to so many other prominent people nowadays. Indeed, when the charges were made public early last year, I was underwhelmed by the account given by one of these women of Lord Rennard’s behaviour towards her during a Lib Dem conference in a Peterborough hotel. His knee had brushed hers on a sofa in the bar; and when she had shifted her knee, his had followed and brushed it again. She had fled to the bathroom, only to find him waiting outside it when she emerged. He had then invited her to his room for a nightcap; but when she declined, that was that: end of story. Except, of course, that it wasn’t; for 14 months later the fate of the former Lib Dem campaign chief still hangs in the balance as the four aggrieved women continue to agitate for his permanent dismissal from the party, and party grandees such as Lady Williams and Lord Steel campaign for this man of long and distinguished party service to be welcomed back into the fold.