A Timely Reform by Ian Ridley

Key points for Lib Dem supporters to think about:

• David Cameron is just another Tory. He has a very long way to go to take the centre ground of British politics and even further to travel to overlap Lib Dem policy and philosophy.
• Charles Kennedy is not Paddy Ashdown. They both have different styles that happily produce high approval ratings from voters. I am as guilty as the next Lib Dem in judging Charles by Paddy’s criteria. Yet Charles has led the Lib Dems to better and better General Election results. You can’t really fault his performance during these campaigns. Any missed opportunities (i.e.; gaining more seats from Labour and the Tories) are more likely the result of strategic and campaigning errors or the excessive financial campaigning resources of the other parties, not due to Charles.
• To Lib Dem MPs and Peers: if you want a change of leader, anonymous media briefings are not the constitutional method to do it. And they have the nasty side-effect of possibly damaging the party.

Thursday, December 15th, 20053:40 pmThis entry was posted on at and is filed under Lib Dem Party. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.