The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee says power may be an aphrodisiac, but it certainly gives otherwise unappealing men the chutzpah to imagine so. Touching up women at work is a way to exert power, often an act of aggression to keep them in their place: underneath it all, women’s realm is the bedroom. The politics of sex are too difficult to navigate, men complain. At work, as at home, the only etiquette question is who has the power. And what women hear again from the Lib Dems is, “Not you.” In The Times Rachel Sylvester thinks that only the Liberal Democrats could have got themselves quite so tied up in knots over the activities of their former chief executive. Nick Clegg had to rely on the Regional Parties Committee (England) to suspend Lord Rennard for failing to apologise over sexual harassment claims — the leader was himself powerless to stop the peer taking his place on the Lib Dem
benches in the House of Lords. In The Daily Express Ross Clark says the Lib Dems have stared into the headlights of power and been left bewildered. They look tired, bereft of ideas and reduced to squabbling over an internal party issue of zero relevance to the rest of us. Lord Rennard and his accusers have given us some entertainment but it would have been much more appreciated had they been able to offer us some government. The Independent’s Steve Richards thinks that for Clegg, the Rennard affair is a no-win dilemma. The former Liberal Democrat chief executive’s suspension gives him more space, but the fundamental nightmare for him remains. If Clegg seeks to remove the whip from Rennard, he could still face an insurrection from senior Lib Dem peers who argue with passion that such a move would be unjust. In not appearing to punish Rennard decisively, Clegg risks the desertion of
some senior female members of the party and a wider perception that he is not in control. Joan Smith says the real reason this affair is so damaging is the public perception that it speaks volumes about the Lib Dems and gender. Labour’s Deputy Leader, Harriet Harman, claimed Rennard’s accusers were being “hung out to dry”, an accusation that has all the more force because senior Labour women don’t have female counterparts on the Lib Dem benches.

The FT’s Janan Ganesh says Ed Miliband touts himself as a new and daring kind of politician but, at the moment, his demonology is that of a dime-a-dozen leftwinger. Every student common room and bien pensant dinner party is full of people who define the “establishment” as banks and corporations, but somehow not the public-sector professions that hold the life chances of ordinary people in their hands. Mr Miliband must be better than that. In The Daily Telegraph Benedict Brogan says that success in politics requires a convincing leader and an effective operation capable of crushing your enemies. The Conservatives under David Cameron have yet to achieve the former but are showing signs that they have created the latter.

The Daily Express says Ukip has come a long way in a short time and should be presenting a challenge to the political establishment. Ukip’s position on the EU is shared by this newspaper, which believes that there are many credible and intellectually respectable reasons for parting company with Brussels. How regrettable that this party lets itself down so badly and has so many loose cannons on board.

The International New York Times thinks Vladimir Putin should keep in mind his own nation’s history of easy Kremlin hatefulness toward all manner of dissidents. His repeated and clumsy references to what are essentially his own prejudices, since glorified by the state, only make Sochi more political and less inviting to world visitors.

The Times says the aim of Nick Clegg’s leadership has been to show that his party has become a mature and professional governing force. Even he cannot look back over the Lord Rennard affair and conclude that they have done anything other that made his party look shambolic, his allies unappetising and his leadership weak.

In The Daily Telegraph Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at King’s College, London, argues that the future evolution of our constitutional monarchy must make provision for a monarchy that could well become a gerontocracy. This may have beneficial effects in combating the cult of youth and increasing public respect for those of more mature years.

In The Guardian George Monbiot argues that without coherent popular movements, which are required to prevent opposition parties from falling into the clutches of millionaires and corporate lobbyists, almost any government would be tempted to engineer a nominally democratic police state. Freedom of all kinds is something we must use or lose. But we seem to have forgotten what it means.

The Daily Mail’s Carol Sarler says the death of any child touches all of us, and the more so when criminal involvement is suspected. Equally, the huge effort on the part of local volunteers to search for Mikaeel Kular in Edinburgh was immensely moving. But involving other children in the aftermath of this unspeakable tragedy is something else all together. Can so many of them really be dragged into it without some, at least, being mentally scarred? For all that people dress up their behaviour as a tribute or act of remembrance, what they are actually doing is indulging themselves, wallowing in a new and peculiar pornography of grief.

@JustinWelby