Political correspondent Robert Merrick looks at which direction the Lib Dems will take with Sir Ming at the helm.

EVERYONE agrees the new Liberal Democrat leader is honest, compassionate and a safe pair of hands, but there is no such consensus about where he will take his party.

Will we see the Sir Menzies Campbell who nearly joined the Labour Party in his youth and who made his name opposing the invasion of Iraq, cementing the Lib Dems' reputation as a party of the left? It was that man who yesterday pledged a "crusade against poverty", to bring values back to politics and quoted Beveridge, author of the welfare state.

Or will he be Ming the Merciless who will ruthlessly ditch the old social liberalism loved by the party's members?

Such tactics - scrapping the tax-and-spend approach and even a commitment to a tax-funded NHS - could tear the Lib Dems in two, just as the Tories, under David Cameron, are on the rise.

A third scenario is that, having picked a 64-year-old cancer survivor who has flopped in the Commons recently, the party has condemned itself to drift and gently decline.

If so, members who chose the safe option of Sir Ming will soon regret not having gambled on a younger, more radical choice.

What is certain is that we will find out soon, as the party's spring conference begins in Harrogate today and with crucial local elections only two months away.

Sir Ming finds his party in surprisingly rude health, having bounced back from headlines about drunks and rent boys to healthy poll ratings and a by-election triumph in Dunfermline.

But doubts will remain about the vitality of the new leader, who appears to have won despite, not because of, his performance during the campaign.

As acting leader, he enjoyed a huge advantage over his rivals by speaking for the Lib Dems at weekly question time in the Commons and later on TV news clips. But he never impressed, offering up questions that failed to hit home, jokes that fell flat and, on one occasion, falling into an obvious trap gleefully exploited by Tony Blair.

At the hustings, he said little of note on policy, allowing rival Chris Huhne to set the agenda on Iraq, "green" taxes and nuclear weapons while displaying his economics expertise.

Under Mr Kennedy, the Lib Dems punched above their weight because of their leader's popularity with the wider public. The same is unlikely to be true of his replacement.

Most worryingly, Sir Ming looks much older than his 64 years, raising doubts that he is in shape for the slog of an election campaign - and adding to the evidence that he is a "stopgap".

Huhne sounded desperate yesterday when he attempted to squash that criticism by pointing out Campbell was "only a year older than Mick Jagger".

The new leader was also insisting he could do the job through two elections, by which time he would be 72.

But there is a reason why the rising stars backed Sir Ming - they think their turn is not far away.