Ex leaders behaving badly

Anyone who thinks that Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher, to name but two, behaved badly in the years after being deposed as leader might want to consider that they could have been even worse.

Slugger O'Toole highlights the recent appearance of the campaign trail by former Ulster Unionist leader Lord Molyneaux of Killead. Only he's been canvassing for Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists! (Slugger O'Toole: Oops he did it again!) Worse still he's been campaigning for them in Belfast North - where the UUP is facing a tough fight to hold its final seat against the DUP.

This is, of course, not the first time Molyneaux has publicly undermined his party - in the 2005 general election he joined with outgoing UUP MP for Belfast South Martin Smyth to endorse the DUP candidate for the seat, resulting in neither Unionist party winning. But one has to wonder why Molyneaux does this. His own position on the province was long that it should be integrated with the rest of the United Kingdom and that a local assembly would just keep the border question open. And he fiercely opposed power sharing, even with constitutional nationalists. So why is endorsing the DUP on their quest to go into government with Sinn Fein? Is the man so bitter that he's thrown all principles to the wind merely to spit his old party colleagues?