It is not enough, as some of Swinson’s supporters will inevitably claim, to point out that the Lib Dems – like the Liberal Party before them – have never had a female leader. That is indeed unfortunate, but is not in itself a definitive argument in Swinson’s favour. For the sake of her own future and that of her party’s, she must avoid being the female candidate and instead be the best candidate (who happens also to be female.) If she enters the forthcoming contest and is seen to perform less well than Cable, if she is unable to map a persuasive and attractive future for her party, she will lose, and rightly so.

But Cable, a knight of the realm and as much a part of the establishment as it is possible to be, was a Labour councillor in my own city when I was still at school in the 1970s, when John Smith was still a junior minister under Harold Wilson. Winston Churchill, of course, proved beyond doubt the advantages of age when he was elected Prime Minister for the first time in 1951 at the age of 77. The Sage of Twickenham (could a nickname emphasise the subject’s age more effectively?) will surely remember, with some distaste, the disgraceful way his friend Ming Campbell was pilloried for accepting his party’s leadership in 2006 at the age of 65.