Rather than react to Jennie's concerns, the parliamentary party doubled down, telling us that we had it wrong, that Lee's amendment was all about public health and not about keeping people out.

Here's the text of what he wrote. Note there is nothing about treatment or screening. It's just "prove you're free of these diseases before we let you in"

'(1) The Secretary of State may by order provide that persons who apply for immigration permission must demonstrate that they are not carriers of any of the prescribed pathogens listed in subsection (2).
(2) The prescribed pathogens are--
(a) Hepatitis B;
(b) HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus);
(c) such other pathogens as the Secretary of State may prescribe by order under this section.'

Phillip Lee himself went on BBC News yesterday and said he stood by all this, and then made a not so veiled threat to sue Jennie for making a fuss.

Well now I'm making a fuss. Rather than realise they needed to fix this, the parliamentary party doubled down and closed ranks.

This is symptomatic of the way the LGBT+ branch of the party has been treated for years, and it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Unlike other diversity strands, we didn't receive funding from the central party. It was a constant bugbear that the party seemed to regard us as a body that followed them round cleaning up messes they made when they did something that affected LGBT+ policy without consulting with us first, and thereby getting it wrong.

Every time this would happen, we'd meet behind closed doors with them, express our frustration, they'd promise to do better next time, and then not do better.

And now we lost our chair, one of the most passionate and principled liberals I know. I was going to stay, even after that, but instead of responding with reflection to what had happened, the parliamentary party closed ranks around Lee.

This is a man who has hinted that he may only be a party member for a couple of months. The entire thing seems to have been done to get TV coverage of him crossing the chamber and sitting on our benches. Our MPs are willing to burn their own LGBT+ section to the ground for a publicity stunt that's already fading from the news cycle.

That makes me feel absolutely wretched, and there's no way I could have stumbled through our forthcoming party conference, at which I was supposed to be chairing a couple of sessions, and pretended I was fine with all this. I'm not.

I realise I've let people I care about down, and I am so genuinely sorry for dropping you in it like this. None of this is your fault and now you're going to have to add to your already too-large workloads. This is not something I wanted to happen.

I will still be voting Liberal Democrat, and I would urge you to do the same. The Liberal Democrats represent the best hope for progressive, tolerant politics in this country, despite their flaws in communication and a parliamentary party that sometimes acts as if it's a law unto itself. I'm not out to nuke my bridges here, but I felt I had to do this, and I needed to explain why.

My accommodation for Bournemouth is already booked, so I'll be there anyway, just not in the conference venue. Come and say hi?