The ‘assassination’ of Menzies Campbell destroyed any idea that the Liberal Democrats are the nice party of British politics.

There was something sinister about the way Simon Hughes and Vincent Cable announced Campbell’s resignation, with their lost leader nowhere to be seen. As they praised Ming, they looked for all the world like a couple of smiling assassins, eulogising the man whose body they had just bundled into a chalk pit.

The following day’s papers appeared to accept that the assassins were right. The Guardian‘s leader described Campbell’s departure as ‘sad but necessary’. It added that:

"A leader approaching 70 at the time of a general election could not have argued he was fighting for the future. Gladstone could do it, but he did not face 24-hour news, constant opinion polling, or the firepit that was prime minister’s questions last week."

What an extraordinary statement. Never mind Gladstone. Winston Churchill was 66 the year he became prime minister in the tragic year of 1940, as Britain faced invasion and disaster. He proved his nation’s saviour. Yet The Guardian would have us believe that 24 hour news and opinion polls are far sterner tests than the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht.

Ming Campbell is clearly no Churchill. But there is a deep irony in a dignified and greatly respected politician – a rare breed – being forced to resign on account of his age soon after Britain outlawed age discrimination.

Voters don’t like warring parties. The Lib Dems should look back on the fearful lesson of Labour in the 1980s and the Conservatives a decade later. It’s possible that things will get worse, rather than better, for them under a new, younger leader.

Few would deny that Menzies Campbell was unsuccessful as leader. But I suspect that owes more to the fact he became leader at exactly the wrong time. The Conservatives had finally elected a leader who recognised the party had to change. Labour was at the very end of the Blair era, followed by the Brown-rebound. Not a good time to become leader of the smallest of the three main UK-wide parties, regardless of your age.

There’s another factor at work. How many of us rely purely on the media for our view of how party leaders are performing? I’d call it the Sissons effect. How many BBC viewers noticed in March 2002 that Peter Sissons wasn’t wearing a black tie as he told the nation the Queen Mother had died? Yet a few days later thousands were roused to fury by the Daily Mail condemning Sissons’ supposed lack of respect. Similarly, many voters will have acquired a similar vicarious view that Menzies Campbell was too old to lead his party.

It’s not just the Lib Dems. Gordon Brown and David Cameron have experienced similar dramatic swings in their reputations in the past month. No wonder politicians want to engage directly with voters without the influence of the media. The evidence so far is none has found a compelling way of doing so. Anyone who cracks the conundrum could be on to a winner.