Le roi est mort. Vive le roi! As soon as we've found him.

Luckily, the LibDems are the party of Lembit Opik - a man who would cheerfully trample over the body of his grandmother to get his mug on a TV camera - who was happy to be on the telly all night. Lembit will be a key person to watch whilst the leadership contest grinds on, as his endorsement is fabled to act as a kiss of death upon whichever campaign he bestows it.

A bloodless but brutal coup seemed to be the general consensus on Tuesday morning, with pundits pointing out that as soon as the Gord announced there would be no election for two years, Ming's days were numbered. However, it seemed to be more a case of death by apathy, with Ming not actually hearing calls for resignation when he took soundings, but not exactly getting ringing endorsement either.

In spite of the best efforts of Recess Monkey to get Prince Vultan of the Hawkmen to stand, the main contenders for the position emerged as Home Affairs spokesman Nicky Clegg and potential knife-wielder Chris Huhne. "Friends" of the latter were rumoured to be moving against Ming via a viral internet campaign and hostile briefings.

Exciting stuff, huh?

Meanwhile, the Union of MPs' Bag-Carriers met in Portcullis House to discuss strike action in the wake of Queuegate. Lembit, sensing another opportunity to appear on the telly outraged on behalf of staffers everywhere, promised that he would take action. Our hero!

While Lembit was pressing the flesh of with comely young interns, Julia Goldsworthy and Nicky Clegg were pressing the flesh downstairs in the atrium. Ladies, ladies! Hacking, politicking, whatever you want to call it is like making love to a beautiful woman: unless you are really uncouth you don't do it in public.

Wednesday dawned with the Gord in a fine mood: "thank F*CK they're going to pick on the LibDems instead of me this week." A largely unexciting PMQs followed, apppart from Vince Cable (standing in) being deafened by calls of "where's the knife?" Cameron's got his strategy all wrong in Westmonster's opinion; the Gord noticeably relaxes after the Boy David's finished asking his questions, so he should break them up a bit more instead of having them all as a block at the beginning.

Apart from the predictably apocalyptic frothings of the Sun and the Express, largely nobody raised an eyebrow as the EU Treaty was signed by the Gord on Friday. Do people actually care about this issue? Westmonster wonders.

The week concluded with the most tedious set of Private Members' Bills since the last sitting Friday, panic amongst the Tories (and Murdoch media) that the Liberals might actually choose a candidate who's got his shit together, and relief in the Brown bunker that - for once - the meedja had somebody else to point and sneer at.