"Irritated and frustrated." That is how Sir Menzies Campbell describes himself on the day after the shock resignation before.
In an interview I have just completed with the former Lib Dem leader at his Edinburgh home (which you can watch here), he told me that after seven days of headlines about leadership doubts, he had concluded that it would be, "very hard to get out from under" the questions about his age and his leadership.
Although he sticks to the party line that it was his decision - and his alone - to go, his face (and occasionally, verbal hints) tell a different story. One or two colleagues, he told me, could have, "said different things in public". Like Vince Cable, or Simon Hughes, I suggest. He refuses to answer, but his face gives its own reply.
Cheekily, I suggest to him that his outspoken wife Elspeth might go further. "That's why," he said with a grin, "I am giving the interview, and she isn't!"
He declared himself angry with what he called the media obsession with his age. But this is just a taster of what we will now learn about in an autobiography he is promising to complete. He will, he told me, have quite a few stories to tell - and yes, they will include the story of his downfall, and that of Charles Kennedy's.
So, we didn't have to wait long to solve the mystery, to find the answer to the question, "did he jump or was he pushed?"
Paddy Ashdown answered it, unwittingly I suspect, in an interview this morning (listen here). As a friend and admirer of the former Lib Dem leader, he said he'd planned to see Ming this morning to tell him, "when you go, go on your own terms". Not a shove in the back then but certainly no offer to fight in the ditches to see off the plotters and the naysayers. It was, instead, more a message of sympathy and support for a man about to take a step over the political precipice.
If this was Ming's friends speaking in public you can only imagine what some of his enemies may have said or, just as importantly, not said, in private. Unlike the defenestration of Charles Kennedy there were no 'round robin' letters demanding the leader go, no delegations of men in grey sandals, no face-to-face confrontations. The knowledge that they could - and even would - follow was ever present. This time the Lib Dem leader was slain by the silence of colleagues who did not come to his aid when people said he was too old, too poor at presentation, and doing too badly in the polls to go on.
Ming Campbell's friends say it was an honourable decision made by an honourable man. Yesterday he consulted just a handful of his closest confidants asking them a simple question - could they see a way he could escape the persistent doubts about his leadership? He had, he told them, had a good conference, he'd given a good speech, the party's ratings had briefly risen to 20%, he'd been well received at party events even once that figure tumbled and yet, every time he tried to focus on policy - the prospect of council tax rises at the weekend - the only story in town was about his failing leadership. Those who spoke to him tell me that he fell back on his lawyer's training, weighed the evidence presented to him by a small number of trusted witnesses and then reached his verdict. It was over.
His most senior colleagues had not the faintest clue what was going on. When Vince Cable appeared on The World at One yesterday to confirm unhelpfully that the party was discussing Ming's leadership, he knew nothing. When Simon Hughes had called on him to raise his game, he too had known nothing. When Ming's favoured successor, Nick Clegg, came to the cameras at teatime yesterday to urge Ming to stay he too knew nothing. When they did find out it was not from their leader. He was, by then, well on his way home to Edinburgh determined to get through his front door before the cameras could be sent to capture the defeated leader's face.
In truth there are two men responsible for the loss of two Lib Dems leaders in two years - neither of them are party members. It has been David Cameron who has successfully driven down the third party's ratings. And it was Gordon Brown's decision not to call an early election which signalled to restless party members that there was, after all, time to search for another leader to head off the Tory/Labour squeeze.
The Liberal Democrats dumped a popular leader for one who was widely respected in Westminster. Now that he has gone their hopes rest with men who are little known in the country and relatively inexperienced at Westminster. The party must hope this morning that it's third time lucky.
