The Liberal Outlaws

Lib Dem street cred appears to be on the up.

Following former leader Charles Kennedy’s ticking off by British Transport Police in July for smoking on a train, the two candidates hoping to follow the Ming Dynasty are both showing their rebel without a cause credentials.

Apparently that nice, quiet Chris Huhne was banned from driving for three months in 2003 after being caught talking on his mobile phone.

This follows hot on the heels of earlier revelations that, as a student radical, he wrote a piece in a university newspaper calling for the legalisation of hard drugs.

Not to be outdone, his arch rival, Nick Clegg, has pledged to lead a campaign of civil resistance in the event of ID cards being forced on an ungrateful nation.

But as The Times recently reminded us, this will not be the home affairs spokesman’s first brush with the law.

As a 16-year-old exchange student in Germany, he secured a minor criminal conviction for arson after he and a friend “torched two greenhouses of cacti belonging to a professor”.

So, basically, whoever becomes leader of the Lib Dems will have a criminal conviction.

Still, some way to go before either man matches up to one-time leader, Jeremy Thorpe, who was, of course, tried (and acquitted) of conspiracy to murder.