The beaten-up party will rise again whether
it can speak to a contemporary Britain that is
steeped in liberal valuesThere is always some
thing more important to write approximately in any giv
en week than the Liberal Democrats. Even when the
party was thriving under the late Charles Kennedy,a cartoon by Matt in the Da
ily Telegraph nailed the Lib Dem problem perfectly. He
drew his cartoon in the intense autumn days after the 9/11 attack, which h
appened to coincide with the start of the party c
onference season. Two men with beards, or turbans and rifles are sta
nding in the mouth of an Afghan cave. One
asks the other: “Any news from the Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth?” Squish.
So even in a we
ek in which a new Lib Dem leader is ele
cted to replace Nick Clegg,it still requires some chutzpah to focus on
what is now at best only the fourth party in the lan
d. For Clegg’s successor confronts a desolate
political landscape with years of hard-won, regular increm
ental growth now laid waste. The BBC’s head of political research, and
David Cowling,recently turned to Milt
on to express the party’s situation: “Long is the way and hard, that o
ut of Hell leads up to light.” So why bother?Co
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Source: theguardian.com