Iain Macleod's famous dictum that the job of oppositions is to oppose has been rather forgotten in the orgy of introspection in which the Tories and Liberal Democrats have been indulging in the past 48 hours. It seems bizarre, for example, that the Tories were so consumed by their own interim manifesto that they found no time to exploit more vigorously the genuinely tragic loss to Labour of a politician of Mo Mowlam's ability, humanity, and popular standing. There is, moreover, something truly unreal about analysing within an inch of their lives the programmes of two parties which even their leaders cannot, deep down, expect to form a government after the next election. But while Charles Kennedy cannot realistically expect to form a government the present electoral arithmetic brutally suggests he has the chance of joining one rather earlier than William Hague. Kennedy, whose turn it was yesterday to outline his own electoral programme, is also unusual, because - like Mowlam, Ken Clarke, Ken Livingstone, and only a few others - he is an able politician who doesn't sound like one. His party's victory in Romsey has given him an authority and mandate which he had seemed to lack He has a sense of humour. He has found the right language to concentrate his fire on the Conservative Party without kowtowing to Labour He is a sure-footed radio and television performer.

And if he panics, he has yet to show any sign of it.That said, the Liberal Democrats' neatly packaged draft manifesto is at once a skilful and disappointing document. Skilful because its emphasis on civil liberties will go a long way to assure those deeply uneasy about the party's relationship with Labour, that he has borrowed none of its authoritarianism. Skilful because commitments like that to raise the old age pension touches a raw nerve with Labour - and no doubt some Tory - voters, while underpinning the Kennedy mantra of social justice. Disappointing because it is pretty short of the modernising, outward-looking ideas with which Kennedy's predecessor Paddy Ashdown used to fizz. In particular there isn't much on reform of the public services. Disappointing because there is an element of opportunism in its approach to the main talking point of the document,

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its tax and spending commitments.It's possible to exaggerate the importance of these.

Indeed, the Liberal Democrats have given a whole new meaning to the term stealth taxes. For it may go down as the first party in history to claim to be in favour of higher taxes than it actually is. The only circumstances in which that mythical beast, a Liberal Democrat government, would add a penny to current income tax levels for spending on education would be if the economy was well below the level of growth forecast by the Treasury - an unlikely post election outcome.The idea of a 50 per cent rate for those earning over £100,000 a year was actively considered within the Labour high command - not least by Gordon Brown - in the run-up to the last general election. And although it was dropped, the all powerful focus group evidence was by no means unambiguously opposed. The tax tables produced by the Liberal Democrats yesterday are confusing in that some projections envisage zero growth and some envisage forecast growth.

But the increases are significantly offset by a £4bn a year proposal to reduce the current 10p rate to zero. Finally most of the taxation ideas - like much else in the document - were actually contained in the party's 1997 manifesto, in the admittedly rather different circumstances of a big deficit.Nevertheless Mr Kennedy's party, having seen its 1997 spending commitments overtaken by what Gordon Brown has actually done, has consciously chosen to differentiate itself from Labour partly by pledging to tax and spend somewhat more than Labour would. This has one obvious plus, which is that it makes the Liberal Democrats a plausible repository for Labour voters disappointed by the delay in the Government's own programme for investing in public services, outlined in this year's Comprehensive Spending Review. Indeed, the Liberal Democrats believe that Labour defections to them at Romsey stemmed even more from such disappointment than from simple anti-Tory tactical voting.