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:

Nick looks and sounds different from other politicians - including other Liberal Democrats. Too often when other Lib Dems crop up on telly, I agree with what they say, but it feels to me that they don’t say it in the way that the public will most readily understand it. Nick is clearly different on this - and this alone offers huge potential opportunities for our party to reach into places that we haven’t before

Nick is a good and enthusiastic political thinker. For some reason this simply hasn’t come across during this election campaign, and I know that this has frustrated a lot of people as well as me. But from my own conversations with him over the years, I know this to be true - and so it will inform what he does as Leader, and in time it must also come out to the public too.

Nick is interested in doing things differently. He will, as he’s said, challenge the party - and I’m convinced this is going to be a lot less comfortable for the party than most people currently seem to think. This means there will be an edge to both some of our internal politics, and our external positions that there hasn’t been in recent years. I think we’re not always all going to enjoy this - but it’s also clear to me that it’s the only way we will make progress beyond where we have historically been.

Nick’s relative youth, as well as the history of the last couple of years, means that it seems likely he will be around as Leader for quite a while. This is good for party stability and allows him and us to plan some fairly long-term development which again should help us to break out beyond our previous levels of support.

And finally and I think by no means unimportantly - Nick is the first Leader of the Liberal Democrats whose history, both in the party and in his membership of the House of Commons, does not stretch back to the days of two parties before merger, and the 1980s. His view, and that of many of his team, is therefore forward-looking, less constrained by some parts of the party’s history, and enthusiastic, in a way that his three predecessors’ inevitably haven’t been. At this point in our party’s history, I think this can only be good for us.

So for all these reasons I go into the Christmas holiday period very positive about the Liberal Democrats. I’m expecting a few more announcements over the next few days - but then in the new year some real new work starting on taking the Liberal Democrats forward for the future.