Britain's LibDems
The op-ed writer for The Econmist who uses the pseudonym Bagehot, offers us a profile of the Liberal Democratic Party in Britain. In spite of the title, he/she doesn't really think the LibDems don't have a future in government. However, the essay is a useful profile of the LibDem constituency.Why the Liberal Democrats are the party of the future
"... the heterogeneous nature of Liberal Democrat voters: they are a tense alliance of disillusioned lefties and well-meaning patricians, genuine liberals and holders of ancestral grudges against the other two parties..."The traditional politics of left and right, at least defined in terms of class and economics, is obsolescent. For the time being, familiar issues such as health and education are still salient. Tribal party loyalties, based on old class identities, still obtain: there are millions of Britons, in ex-industrial northern towns and patriotic suburbs, for whom voting for anyone other than Labour or the Tories is more or less unthinkable. But, like religious identities, those bonds are weakening, as the economy that created them is transformed. New political axes will come to rival, if not entirely replace, the old economic one: liberty versus security, say, or liberty versus environmentalism. The result will be that, even more than Tony Blair in pursuit of his 1997 landslide, parties will need to yoke together disparate coalitions of dissimilar voters in order to win elections...
"In one respect, however, the Liberal Democrats are and will remain unique. Not only do their policies not determine their popularity: their popularity will not determine their chances of wielding power. For that they need a hung parliament after the next election..."
posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:00 AM
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