Answered by Jo Swinson
I think it is very regrettable with this climate and I don’t know if there is a magic age, it always seems to me that there is a little golden window of about 40 to 55 where people have earned their stripes and they have enough experience but they are not quite past it yet – but I don’t think we should say that anything outside that age is too young or too old and to be honest I think it is the media that are effectively saying that. Ming went through 70 interviews during the Lib Dem conference and in every single one he was asked if he was too old to do the job. When you are the leader of a political party and your job is to get across policies on a range of issues and in every interview valuable time is spent talking about your age then that is interfering with your ability to do your job, sadly. In a sense, that question might be best directed towards sections of the media who are drawing the cartoons. Even now I see the same cartoonists who depicted Ming with a zimmer frame are now depicting one of the candidates for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats in nappies because he happens to be 40 – you can’t win.
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