Having written what I did about the Liberal Democrats yesterday, it seems I was not alone in pausing for a moment and thinking aloud with some ideas of just where their party is and what it should do in future to turn things around. Danny Finkelstein has a piece where in parts he seems to agree with me on the state of the Lib Dems and that they have a small window of opportunity approaching which they are ill prepared for, though Danny seems to take a much different view on their potential direction.
I also see in the Guardian that there is a massive split in the "leadership" whereby 18 of the 29 federal policy committee [who write the Liberal Democrat Manifesto] have written to the Guardian to state that they will be including a pledge to scrap tuition fees in the election manifesto, no matter how the leadership of the party feels about it. There seems to now be an active attempt from within the Liberal Democrat party to seperate out what Liberal Democrats stand for and what the Liberal Democrat Leadership stands for - and it is all very unattractive to floating voters. It is hard to imagine a more ideological split occurring, and it damning that it is so public; the party is deeply split.
Today's closing will no doubt include vein calls to lend support to the Liberal Democrats. Their greatest tragedy, which I missed but Danny did pick up on is that there is a 7 point swing from Con/Lab at the last election to the "others" column, in the polls - support from the disaffected is passing from the main two parties and is bypassing the Liberal Democrats and going to smaller and newer parties. The Liberal Deomcrats are in danger of being relegated to that "others" column if their support shrinks further.
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