We know that Ming Campbell faced the threat of a leadership challenge, at least we think we do. Today he complained about the media obsession with is age. But what may have pushed him over the brink was silence. Colleagues and friends like Paddy Ashdown were privately telling him that he had done well and should step down in his own time.
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Breakfast, west London
But no one was speaking out in public in defence of Ming's leadership, no one was begging him in private to battle on bravely and come through. Instead, silence. That must have been quite spooky for him. He is a proud man.
On Radio 4's Today this morning, Lord Ashdown said that Ming "ought to be celebrating" the timing and manner of his departure: he had done it in the party's interest at a time of his choosing, soon after Gordon Brown's election postponement changed everything.
That's a bit pious - Bishop Ashdown at his best - but kindness is never wasted. Ashdown says the younger generation of Lib Dem pols are full of "intellectual horsepower and raw political energy". In his Tiggerish way he reminds people that they all came into politics when he was leader. Clever Paddy!
Talking of which, on my way to Private Eye's Paul Foot Awards, I bumped into one of the Ashdown Young Turks - Dr Vince Cable MP - leaving the BBC's Millbank studios where the news bulletins have been presenting his even-handed remarks (Ming's job "under discussion, not under threat") as a backstabbing.
Will you stand? "I might do. I don't rule it out," replies Dr Vince, who jokes that his favourite politician is China's reformer, Deng Xiaoping, who got to the top in 1978 at 74 - and stayed there until well into his 80s. Dr Cable is 64.
That is a lot older than Nick Clegg (40) and Chris Huhne (51), let alone Simon Hughes (55), who usually stands on these occasions. Steve Webb, the MP for Northavon in Somerset and the policy wonk's wonk (he is drafting the Lib Dem manifesto), may also run from the left of the party spectrum. He is 42, though he could pass for 44.
A female candidate will also be pressed to stand in the interests of gender equality. She will probably turn out to be Susan Kramer (57), the ex-London mayoral candidate and now MP for Richmond Park - Surrey, not Yorkshire. There again, that Julia Goldsworthy, the MP for Falmouth and her native Camborne, is ambitious and only 29. She could lock Susan in the ladies loo. These Lib Dems are capable of all sorts of things.
The BBC, which stoked the "Ming Must Go" fire all day yesterday, is still leading Radio 4 bulletins on it. But both the Times and Daily Mail are more excited by the latest research which claims that middle class neighbourhoods are awash with "hazardous" everyday drinking.
By this they mean more than 22 units of alcohol a week, three 125ml glasses of wine a day for men, 15 for women. A bloke on the radio says more than 12 - two bottles of wine a week - puts us on the slippery slope. Of course, the dangerous drinking habits, 50 plus units pw, are concentrated on poor working class areas. But that interests the papers less.
Why does this sort of talk always sound such tosh? When I lived in America 20 years ago fellow-parents would admit that anti-drink propaganda was so hysterical that their children would cry "No, no, daddy" if they saw Pop open a second bottle of Budweiser, a beer so weak it could probably have been legally sold during Prohibition.
Could that explain why America has such a major problem with hard drugs? If Bud turns out to be harmless, why not try coke?
Back at the Private Eye party, this year's winner is my Guardian colleague, David Leigh, the scourge of BAE's questionable foreign arms dealings. I arrive too late for the speeches. In our corner of the room, hardcore investigative hacks, who are very competitive towards each other, say "no prize until someone goes to jail". That would be a high bar.
Mid-evening, Westminster:
Nothing I've heard here today has yet caused me to revise my working assumption that Nick Clegg will be elected post-Ming Lib Dem leader on December 16. John Hemming, the boisterous MP for Birmingham Yardley, is not the only wannabe candidate kidding himself. Charles Kennedy is said to be considering a run. A bit sad.
Chris Huhne is probably hungrier - more ambitious - and possibly cleverer. But Clegg will probably get Sir Ming's support and Paddy Ashdown's, perhaps even Steve Webb's if he decides not to run. Webb thinks Clegg is the most strategic of his colleagues. But it's also the voter-friendly thing.
I watch Sir Ming's broadcast in the office of a Lib Dem MP who insists ''there was no plot.'' Ming was cross his weekend speeches got little coverage (when did weekend speeches ever get it?) and told the broadcasters from home in Edinburgh that the media was obsessed with his age. The media is ageist, but Ming looks his age - and a bit.
But rival parties have enjoyed it. A Tory MP passing the back door of the Lib Dem whips office quipped ''Don't slip on that bit of carpet, it's soaked in blood.'' ''Ruthless bastards, those Lib Dems," murmered a Labour ex-minister.
If the Lib Dems were not absorbing media attention (or is it the other way around?), Labour's tearoom complaints against the Brownite teenagers might be getting more play. Several MPs have complained to me in similar terms today about the botched snap election: that those behind it had never faced political adversity. ''They were parachuted into safe seats, then they were parachuted into the cabinet.''
Loitering in the atrium of Portcullis House, the glass-roofed parliamentary office building I see Boris Johnson passing. The London mayoral candidate sees a voter - me - and gives a clenched fist wave. Clenched fist? Isn't that more Ken ? ''No Boris,'' I shout. ''No clenched fists.''
