Member-only story
Michael Meadowcroft, a once famous part of the leadership of the Liberal Democrats writes in a letter to the Guardian, and among other things, says,
Having deliberately cut themselves off from the benefits of the identifiable tradition of political Liberalism, the Liberal Democrats now lack a solid base to advance electorally. And the almost ubiquitous abbreviation to “Lib Dem” diminishes still further any resonance with the past. It is high time the party accepted the harm done to Liberalism by its attachment to the SDP and rebuilt its Liberal base.
I think this misses a couple of points.
Firstly, I am unclear how much the ideology of Liberalism actually helped the Liberals electorally. To me they have always been, Tories with a bit of conscience, somewhere to vote if you don’t want the Tories and can’t support the workerism or socialism of the Labour Party.
Secondly the post-war high point for the Liberal Democrats was the 2004–2010 parliamentary party, where they were led by an ex-member of the SDP and presented themselves as to the left of “New Labour”. In an act of hubris, they replaced their then leader, Charles Kennedy.
This eventually led to a leadership election between Clegg and Huhne, both exponents of orange book liberalism, which prioritised macroeconomics…
