Ming’s preferred choice said to be not running

Kennedy “unlikely to run”

Cable won’t stand – “an older candidate is not electable”

BBC says Kramer and Davey have ruled themselves out

Webb says he has sufficient signatures

Hemming reportedly has 5 out of the 7 nominations needed

The race to succeed Ming is now taking shape, and unless John Hemming can secure the required seven signatures from fellow MPs, it’s starting to look less likely that anyone will enter the contest besides Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne, and Steve Webb.

Cable, Kramer, and Davey are out, and Kennedy looks a non-runner too, while not ruling it out completely. Julia Goldsworthy, about whom there has been plenty of speculation, is also reportedly not going to stand – could she be the next leader but one? However, she does not have the luxury of a safe seat.

Brown appeared more sure-footed at PMQs today although there was still plenty of stuttering. Pundits appear to be scoring it as a draw or a narrow Cameron victory – Labour benches shouting “More!” to Cameron this week. Certainly much better for Gordon than last week’s debacle, while Cable drew laughter with his question on tax breaks for marriage. Nick Assinder considers PMQs here.

Finally, in the race for the White House, Gore looks to be finally out of the race, and the formal process to select the presidential candidates will start earlier than ever before, with the Iowa Republican caucus set to be on Thursday 3rd January, and the state Democrats being urged to have the same date. This could be just 5 days before a possible date for the New Hampshire primary of 8th January (NH has yet to confirm a date and could still in theory hold the ballot in December).

Latest Lib Dem prices are here.

Guest Editor’s Note

This will be my last piece for this stint in charge of pb, unless we have some more major breaking news, and Mike will be back in the hot seat tomorrow. It’s been frantically busy on the site, with 1000 posts on Monday, but great fun and very exciting to be running pb while a big story broke.

Thanks to everyone for their comments and support, including the comments on last night’s Switzerland article which was held back by 24 hours for obvious reasons. Although I had to dish out one yellow card from the referee’s top pocket, the site does seem to have been fairly well behaved since then, and also good to see that Sean T and Nick P are both still within pb’s “big tent” and I hope that it stays that way.

Special thanks to Mike for entrusting me with the site once more, and also for posting articles while in North America, which made my job much easier, and thanks too to Sean Fear and Innocent Abroad for their contributions. All being well, there should be another guest article out later on today.

A final mention for the Election Game – the current game is for Switzerland and Argentina, so click on the logo below to email me if you’d like to enter. Forthcoming releases this autumn will be for Australia and the Lib Dem Leadership.

That’s all for now – I’ll go back to being an avid reader of the site, normally a lurker, but with the occasional post, and return pb to Mike’s safe hands.

Cheers & all the best.

Paul Maggs “Double Carpet”

Guest Editor

Mike Smithson returns tomorrow

Paul Maggs runs The Election Game – click on the logo to email for more information.