In fact he told a whole roomful of people - and although obviously we all realised that it meant a new era for the party, no-one seemed particularly surprised. Over the last few weeks this had become quite widely known by staff and MPs and others who were interested. He had clearly given thought to smooth succession planning, and in fact had a preferred successor lined up.

Yes, it seems that he had decided over the summer that he didn’t want to continue as Chair of the Federal Policy Committee as well as Leader. Like others, I could see the case for this - though it was quite a new departure, as ever since the Lib Dems were formed in 1988, the Leader has also held the post of FPC Chair.

For although constitutionally a separate position, when Paddy became Leader he decided that he also thought it an important part of doing that job also to chair the committee in charge of policy-making. Although formally the FPC chair is elected by MPs, if a newly-elected Leader said he wanted to do it, the MPs were not going to over-rule that. And when Charles became Leader he decided to continue that habit, as did Ming (though the option of him not doing so was floated at the time).

However there is definitely a case to say, particularly when a new Leader has bedded themselves in, they don’t need actually to be chair of the FPC, though they would remain as a member (under the constitution).

From the FPC’s side it can be a bit confusing having as its formal chair someone who has other principal responsibilities and is not always able to be present at all its meetings, but on balance it has worked well, especially through a system of 3 Vice Chairs. Under Ming this has improved, with formal meetings of the committee’s officers to help co-ordinate its work - and the really important element has been the Leader and his team using to advantage the fact that the same person chairs both the FPC and the Shadow Cabinet, with whom the FPC could otherwise very easily find itself engaged in turf wars.

Clearly the new Leader, whoever it is, will have to decide for themselves if they wish to chair the FPC. I suspect that they probably will want to, though obviously I don’t know.

They will also have other related challenges. For one of the lines which I haven’t seen picked up anywhere yet is this from Ming’s resignation letter:

I am convinced that the internal structures of the party need radical revision if we are to compete effectively against Labour and the Conservatives.

This is quite interesting. Ming was at times clearly somewhat frustrated by the party’s internal processes, and it seems likely that there will now be some discussion of reforming them. I don’t know any specifics but this will presumably be something along the lines of ’streamlining the bureaucracy’, and especially in speeding up decision-making. I think this is a good direction to be heading in, and will want to work with whoever is engaged in it, to help try and achieve it.

But whatever is proposed will need also to work with elements of the current system that need to be retained: most crucially, central elements of ensuring that the party at large retains the key say over crucial decisions. This is much of what makes our party our party - and of course the final backstop is that any real change will need an amendment to the party’s constitution, which means agreement from party conference.

This will be an interesting debate for us as a party - though a complex one, as many of the issues and linkages involved are not simple ones. I’ll be very interested to see if it surfaces during the leadership campaign.