"Who's driving this clattering train?"

My spidey sense is telling me the PLP are afraid of Gina Spence-Farmer.

I think I would be too. She could do it. Could the UBP actually be uniting? Or am I reading too much into it? Get Gina out there talking on the issues - done, she's in the Senate. Now, force a by-election somewhere, preferably in a UBP stronghold, get her into the House as an elected representative of the people - now she can do some real damage. Now, all of a sudden, she could become leader of the party.

Could.

If all that were to happen - and to happen before the next election, which if P really wants to spin out this Independence debate won't be happening until it absolutely has to - the scene could shift very, very quickly.

She's new to politics, so people aren't sick and tired and disillusioned with her yet. However she's not some unknown, people know who she is and what she stands for. She appears to have a generation of young people on her side - college students who may have been too young to vote in the last election but will be voting in the next one. I don't know how they feel about her within the party, but there appears to be no one else they will rally behind - no one has been able to get the required support to challenge Grant Gibbons for the leadership. (Yet.) Maybe Grant's pushing her now - maybe he doesn't want to leave (ok, he doesn't want to leave), but, maybe, being an intelligent man, he sees that the writing is on the wall, and is determined to at least depart on his own terms. (It's incredible how it all swings on something as seemingly inconsequential as charisma. The battle of the Davids for the Tory leadership is the perfect example. Has star power always been such a potent political force or is this just another symptom of our mass media age?)

Back to them byes. Who else could there be? Christian Dunleavey called the Wayne Furbert suggestion. It is weird that Furbert should be named a deputy leader along with Dunkley two years ago - and still be referred to as deputy up until July of this year - and then Jon Brunson be named a deputy with Dunkley just weeks ago with no mention of what happened to Furbert's role. If they've been asked about that yet I haven't seen it.

Then there's the triumvirate of Barritt, Dunkley and Dodwell - all of whom could do it and do it well. They're dedicated, they're passionate, they're determined, they've got the experience, and so on and so forth (I know what certain people out there are thinking - to them I say, aw shuddup already).

The problem is, they've all been around for so long, (oh yeah and they're all white and rich - seems to work for US presidents and, oddly, wannabe Tory leaders, but definitely a handicap in Bermuda politics). Everyone seems to be so tired of both the PLP and the UBP Old Guard (apparently even the PLP is tired of its Old Guard - how quickly loyalty dissolves on both sides once the bonds are cut) that it would be hard to get excited about any of them. Gina could rally that excitement.

Unfortunately, she'd also be suffering from Ashfield-syndrome. I strongly doubt that a woman who's been in politics for such a short time, who hasn't even served time as a backbencher or in a Shadow Cabinet, who is completely and totally untried, could reasonably be catapulted to the very top position inside of three years.

But it's a watch-this-space thought. Maybe the next election is a tad soon, but there's always the one after that. Who knows.

In the meantime, on a slight tangent, I'm sure that reading Shirer's Berlin Diary for hours and then reading the news from home immediately afterwards was probably too potent a cocktail for the old imagination. Simmer down, there, Sarah. This is most certainly not the Third Reich, even if the rhetoric does seem to be ... well, echoing.

It all does raise a few questions though. Someone is driving the train. Is it the Premier? Does he wield that kind of star power? Or is it someone else?