Danny Alexander MP, key note speaker at Lunar New Year Dinner

Thanks to Euro Candidate Jonathan Fryer for his blog on our Lunar New Year Dinner held on 11 February at the New Loon Fung Restaurant with over 140 guests:

"Harriet Harman once notoriously referred to Treasury Secretary Danny Alexander as a "ginger rodent" - a remark she later regretted and withdrew, though Danny had the last laugh by sending out a Christmas card the following Michaelmas featuring a red squirrel. Alexander 3, Harman 0, as London's Evening Standard likes to summarise these political spats.

But this evening, at the Chinese Liberal Democrats' annual Chinese New Year dinner in London's Chinatown, at which he was guest speaker, Danny made himself a further hostage to fortune to the political sketchwriters by admitting that he discovered recently that in Chinese terms, he is a Rat (having been born in the year starting 15 February 1972).

According to the Chinese zodiac, the strengths of Rats include being smart and wealthy and successful (all great Chinese virtues). Rats are also sanguine and very adaptable, and popular. I shall leave others to research the Rats' weaknesses. This year, of course, is the Year of the Horse, which Liberal Democrats in London hope will lead to the Party galloping to victory in the local and European elections on 22 May. Certainly, Britain's economic and financial position - for which Danny must share some of the Coalition's responsibility - is in a far healthier state than when the new Government took over in 2010, and the steady rise of the income tax allowance to £10,000 is indeed something for all to celebrate.

Moreover, as tonight's dinner attendance showed, the LibDems' reach into both the Chinese and Korean communities in the UK has been impressively extended. So which Labour MP will be the first to tease Danny the Rat? Not Harriet Harman, I'm sure. Once bitten, twice shy. Oh, and if you're wondering, I'm a Tiger. Doesn't it show?"