FORMER Tatton MP Martin Bell believes he is too old to return to politics. But what do readers think?

Is Martin Bell too old to stand for Parliament?
	Yes... he's far too old
	Yes... he's a little too old
	No... he should stand for one term
	No... he should stand for several terms
	His age doesn't matter

Old Ballot Results
Ballot Question	Date Closed
What would most attract visitors to Knutsford at Christmas?	2008-02-21
Is Tory leader David Cameron the right man to take on Prime Minister Gordon Brown?	2007-10-31
Should GPs’ surgeries in Knutsford be moved under one roof in a new medical centre?	2007-07-25
Should GPs’ surgeries in Knutsford be moved under one roof in a new medical centre?	2007-05-23
Should a multi-storey car park be built in Knutsford?	2007-05-10

Martin Bell believes he is too old to return to politics. He told the Knutsford Guardian that it was very unlikely that he would challenge Shadow Chancellor George Osborne or scandal-hit Macclesfield MP Sir Nicholas Winterton - despite calls for him to do so. “I think 69 is too old to be restarting a career in politics,” said Mr Bell. “Ronald Reagan - not that I am comparing myself to an American president - began his first term when he was 70 but by the end of his two terms he began to lose it a bit.” Mr Bell, who represented Tatton as an independent MP from 1997 to 2001, told the Knutsford Guardian last week that he had been urged to stand again for Parliament after he returned to the political arena to challenge the Government’s decision to split Cheshire. But he said he had not contemplated sitting in the House of Commons. “It has all come from other people,” he said. “How old is too old?” Apart from Ronald Reagan there have been many politicians who made their mark well into their seventies. William Gladstone, who became known as the Grand Old Man, was 70 when he began his second term as Prime Minister - and 84 when he finished his fourth term. Britain won the Second World War with 70-year-old Winston Churchill as leader. In other fields philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote his best-known work The Critique of Pure Reason when he was in his fifties, Rupert Murdoch still runs News Corporation at 76 and Colonel Sanders founded Kentucky Fried Chicken at 62. “I don’t think age comes into it at all,” said Knutsford Labour Party campaigner Laurie Burton, 77. “You’re too old when your marbles start to go and that could be when you’re 30.” He said he hoped Mr Bell would stand. “It would be interesting and I’d like to see it happen,” he said. “But it would be very difficult for him and I think he probably knows that. “When you’ve got all the main political parties putting candidates up it is a very different scenario to when the Liberal Democrats and Labour stood down in 1997.” Knutsford’s Conservative county councillor Bert Grange, 77, said Mr Bell was not too old. “There are a lot of people in the House of Commons and House of Lord who are in their 80s,” he said. But he agreed that defeating George Osborne would be more difficult than ousting Neil Hamilton in 1997. “It was a bit different when he stood last time,” he said “It was a certain ticket at a certain time.”