What’s the point of the Liberal Democrats?

What’s the point of the Liberal Democrats? | Martha Gill

Britain’s political centre, plus 16 million remain voters, are there for the taking – but the party has to up its game

The Liberal Democrat party: a dead parrot or a phoenix? Political roadkill or cockroach surviving a nuclear winter? Lib Dems themselves don’t quite know. Ask a local campaigner, and the answer will be rather optimistic. The party has done well in this year’s byelections, and the membership, galvanised by Brexit, has recently risen to almost 100,000. Crucially, the memory of the toxic coalition years appears to be fading: the disheartening phrase “tuition fees”, campaigners say, is no longer heard so often on doorsteps.

But staff at its London headquarters are frustrated, not least as the party is now planning to make a quarter of them redundant to save money. They are all too aware of the double opportunity the party has been handed: Britain’s political centre, along with some 16 million remain voters. Here is a chance – one, surely, in several lifetimes – for the party to take a big leap forward. Yet it struggles to rise above 10% in the polls, and its MPs get little airtime. So why can’t the Lib Dems seize the moment?

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2QoEofM

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