The Liberal Democrats, to their credit, have long campaigned for freedom of information. They are certainly practising what they preach when it comes to their own leader. Charles Kennedy’s closest colleagues have all but queued up over the past few weeks to damn him with praise so faint that it might as well be invisible. Lord McNally, for example, the wily leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords, has told The Times that while he believes Mr Kennedy’s position was “recoverable”, he would require a “radical, rapid and sustained change in style and content” to survive and to thrive in future.

Lord McNally also wants discontented MPs to postpone any challenge to Mr Kennedy until after the local elections in May. An earlier move, he said, would mean that Liberal Democrat councillors “will pay a high price at the ballot box”. Simon Hughes, as the party president, echoes that sentiment today. Others argue that the debate over the leadership could be deferred until the party’s spring conference in March, which would become a “make-or-break” moment for Mr Kennedy. A few masochists want to wait for the full party conference in September.

This would be ludicrous. The Liberal Democrats cannot spend months on end with their leader under the threat of political public execution, conducting a discussion as to the precise date and method of his demise. It is not fair to the leader, or to those who have to carry their party’s colours in the local council contests. Mr Kennedy has, in effect, urged his critics to “put up or shut up”. They have not done either. That should not continue. The Liberal Democrat leader cannot plausibly stay on if he has really forfeited the confidence of a majority of his fellow parliamentarians. Nor can or should a coup against him succeed if most MPs sincerely want him to remain in charge.

To delay would solve nothing. One speech at a spring conference is a surreal way in which to decide the direction of a party. The idea that a series of local elections, mostly to be conducted across urban parts of England, should be assessed as if it were a national referendum on Mr Kennedy is ridiculous. They will probably be a muted verdict on the standing of the Government. Hanging on longer still until September verges on the criminally insane. It would overshadow everything else.

The time to make a decision is imminent. When MPs return to Westminster next week, Mr Kennedy should invite them to participate in a swift vote of confidence in him. If he does not, then those who have lost faith in him should leave the Shadow Cabinet portfolios to which they have been appointed and force the matter on him. If he loses, the party could organise a leadership ballot before the spring conference. If he wins, then Mr Kennedy is entitled to (belated) absolute loyalty.

There is a worst-case scenario that Liberal Democrats should be aware of: Their leader may endure despite being desperately damaged because those who want him out lack the courage of their convictions, while Mr Kennedy manages to mobilise the party’s activists behind him. That outcome would not, though, mean simply a mere continuation of the status quo. It would render Mr Kennedy a political hostage to the faction that is most vigorously opposed to a shift of policy direction. It is the result that should fill him and all his rivals with horror. The Liberal Democrats want to be taken seriously by others. Now is the time for them to be deadly serious about themselves.