Two weeks into the New Year and all the talk is about new party leaders!

The Tories have already got David Cameron. New Labour are due to swap old Tony for old Gordon - or perhaps someone else?

And after a dreadful three weeks over the holiday break during which I could hardly watch the TV or read the national papers, we Liberal Democrats have the prospect of four excellent candidates.

Well, three excellent candidates anyway, who I think will do us nothing but good by debating Liberal ideas and strategy in a good-humoured way.

It gets harder and harder in the modern media to generate sensible debate about policies and issues, let alone those old-fashioned things called principles which may be the same as the "values" much espoused by Mr Blair and his friends, though personally I rather think not.

Yet these are fascinating times. Blair turned Labour into New Labour and took it into power by a process they bizarrely lled "triangulation".

He ditched more and more of what Labour stood for, abandoned socialism and the old idea of "the party for the working class" and pursued floating Tory votes in places like Basildon, Basingstoke and Worcester.

It meant moving right to push out the Tories from their traditional ground.

And of course, for a long time it worked. The downside was the steady erosion of the party's activist base.

Now, it seems, Cameron has set out to be the "Tory Blair" and has even - implausibly - been going round pretending to be a liberal.

I hope we Liberal Democrats hold our nerve and don't go panicking off in search of our own "triangulation" rightwards on to Tory ground.

Back in the Lords, this week sees the opposition parties taking on New Labour for the first serious battles of 2006. We start off today and next Monday with the Identity Cards Bill.

Tomorrow and next Tuesday we lock horns with them over the Terrorism Bill.

These are both areas where the Labour Government is putting forward legislation which is not only poorly thought out (nothing new there) but which contains dangerously illiberal, authoritarian proposals.

How odd it seems that Liberal Democrats and Tories can make common cause with some Labour backbenchers and many independents to oppose a supposedly Labour government which has triangulated itself so far away from the centre ground.

But it's the reality of Westminster politics today.