LibDemDiversity
Any party that can contain both this writer and this one is clearly worryingly divided (to put it harshly) and pleasingly diverse (to put it how I would). Unfortunately this rather supports the most biting criticism that has been made against the party: that they lack any core meaning or convictions.
I would suggest instead that the disparity is a consequence of the future of liberalism often being one of dour men who hated income tax and therefore appealing to certain people with a historical understanding of the term. Meanwhile the immediate history of the party is that of being the one which advanced its vote substantially during the last election under an anti-Iraq and pro-tax on the rich platform.
In addition to this there is the rather curious history of the party, which came about as a fusion of the Liberals and the Social Democratic Party. The former are probably the type which Ms. Gore feels most at home in but the SDP were only moderates in their day because the Labour Party seemed likely to be taken over by a coterie of Leninists. We have degenerated so thoroughly in this country that presently being a committed social democrat (instead of the kind that implements social democratic policies only when forced to accept the abject failure of “pure” capitalism by the brute force of reality) is enough to render you on the “far left” of the Labour Party.
So its understandable the Liberal Democrats are ideologically at a loose end, and although I’d much prefer the present arrangement to their being two small parties constantly rowing over third and fourth place they will always strike me as aesthetically aberrant.