I am of course delighted that Nick Clegg has won the race to be our next Leader - obviously I’d rather it hadn’t been quite so close (if the contest had lasted another week, I think it’s pretty clear that Chris would have won it), but as Dubya has shown us, an extremely tight victory doesn’t necessarily have to detract much from strong leadership (though I hope and trust Nick’s leadership will be rather more intelligently directed than Bush’s!)

But it isn’t just that I’m glad the distractions of the internal contest are now over, and I’m glad my guy won: it does feel like a really new start for our party, for a few reasons:

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Liberator magazine has published in their latest edition an article I have written, looking again at whether we could shorten the party’s existing policy process, and the separate question of whether we would be wise to do so.

Having argued in the past for changes to our policy process (and won some as a result), I am not convinced that dramatically shortening the process in the way I outline would serve us well. But this kind of issue does seem to be coming under discussion again, so if we are going to talk about it then I thought it would be as well to give us some idea of the sorts of changes we would be talking about - so I’ve set them out.

There isn’t a facility to comment, on the link to the article where it is published, so please feel free to comment on its proposals here.

Even more than usual I would very much welcome views on what I’ve said. As I say, I’m not convinced, but I’d like to know what others think.