The dust settles, Ming will emerge.

He has two pressing problems. The first is to restore party morale and persuade the rank and file that the parliamentary party did the best thing both for liberalism and for CK by forcing him out. It has been clear even through the distorting media lens of the last day or two that his personal demons are not yet slain, and he needs to deal with them. He is young enough and talented enough to occupy pole position again, when he is fully recovered and in control of his own destiny.

The more serious problem is to address the problem of collective leadership that allowed the present situation to develop. His parliamentary colleagues must have been aware that CK has not been his own master for some time, and they should have acted earlier. The question is why they felt unable to do so until now: the criticism should not be that they have been disloyal, but that they have been too loyal to CK the leader. True loyalty both to the party and to CK as a friend and colleague has been displaced by an artificial loyalty expressed through gritted teeth.

All Westminster parties face difficulties in choosing their leader. The LibDems one-member, one-vote is transparently democratic, but - as the Tories found with IDS - activist members don't always see the same sides of an individual as parliamentary colleagues. The challenge for all of them is to find a way of selecting the leadership that is both democratic and supportable at the front line. For a party like the LibDems, this process should - in my view - emphasise the collective rather than the personal.

I would suggest that the Shadow Cabinet should be elected by the membership, with a proportion standing for re-election annually. The Shadow Cabinet itself would decide who amongst them would take each of the respective positions, depending on their interests, passions and talent - by consensus and/or by secret ballot between them. The party and parliamentary leader is only one such position, and its holder should be chosen for his or her ability in front of the cameras and at the despatch box. The Shadow Cabinet would also decide which of them should stand for re-election each year.

Once in power, the party should continue to operate the same system, keeping a strong collective leadership rather than relying too heavily on the personality of a single individual.

I have been wondering whether to get involved in these discussions but I can't let your comments go unanswered.

I would be unhappy at any suggestion that ordinary party members should be taken out of the decision to elect the party leader. After all, he or she is the leader of the whole party - not just the parliamentary party.

You may be right in saying that the MP's did not act decisively or quickly enough to deal with the problem but it must have been a difficult judgment to make. I do wish some of them had been a bit more careful about the wording they used to the press on Friday. However, all the MP's rely on the party's membership (and particularly the activists) to help with the leaflets and funding that gets them elected. I do not think that anyone should suggest that the same membership are not capable of choosing the party's leader.

Similar thinking has led to the Labour and Tory parties taking away the ability to vote on policy from their annual conferences. I would not want that to happen to the Lib Dems.

A lot of people are feeling very bruised and sore after the last few days. We should be careful not to suggest anything which we might regret later and which might put some of the hardest workers off.

The best thing we can do is have a proper leadership contest which gives people a chance to weigh up different strengths, weaknesses and policy views. The only thing I would say to any candidate is that they should watch the phrases they use so as not to leave us worse off than we are now in the public's eyes.

The problem we had was not one of process, but a clash of judgement that would inevitably be ugly.

The idea of electing a leadership committee, that in turn elects the leader, frankly, gives me the heebie jeebies.

The problem isn't that the membership got it wrong, Charles did a good job. The problem was that he wasn't doing it any more. The processes for dealing with this were in place, but are necessarily painful to use.

Direct election of the leader is vital to party democracy. Giving the members lots of minor decisions instead of one major one is just fobbing them off. And they are not likely to be better decisions, none meriting the same care and consideration.

So lets not talk about the process. Lets have a leadership contest, during which we can talk about the issues we face in the future. And put this whole business behind us.

The point I was trying to make is not how should we elect the leadership - clearly, in a democratic party, the leadership must be chosen by the membership - but what sort of leadership that should be.
I think it needs to be a collective leadership, not focused on one individual - in whom far too much power rests. This is particularly germane when in government; the Prime Minister in the UK has almost dictatorial powers which are almost inevitably corrupting.
So I'm not suggesting that the Shadow Cabinet should elect a leader with dictatorial powers. It should - as a collective leadership body - select which of its members does the best job at the despatch box, and possibly a different person with different skills to appear on Question Time or on the Today programme.

This has been tried and tested by The Green Party.

I'm not sure they've secured any extra credibility or coverage for themselves or their cause by doing do.

Personalities count, and having one, clearly-identifiable figure-head counts even more.

Y