I’m sad to hear that Ming has resigned tonight.

As one of his Vice Chairs of the Federal Policy Committee I’ve had the opportunity to work with and get to know him over the last year and a half and have had a chance to see what he has really done for the party.

It really is absolutely true that he and his highly impressive personal team have made a complete step-change in the way that we organise and run things at a senior level. By its nature most of this is behind the scenes, but it has made a huge difference in the way the Liberal Democrats run and presents itself in public.

I’ve also had the chance to see a little of the man behind the rather austere public image. How many of the public would think, for example, that when a gap needed filling while we waited for someone to arrive at an FPC meeting that he was chairing, that he would just basically tell jokes for five minutes?

But he was also an impressive leader who very much believed in leading from the front. He didn’t trim his view just to keep everyone in the room happy: if he thought something then he went out and argued for it, within the party as well as to the world at large.

The party, many aspects of which were in a pretty confused state by January 2006, have benefitted enormously from that strength of purpose.

I’m as excited as anyone by the new opportunities that the next few months and years now open up for us as a party - and I definitely want to make sure that we make the right decisions to make the most of them.

Whoever does become leader will inherit a party which is immeasurably better placed to face the future than when Ming Campbell inherited it.