[A-List] UK state: political realignment

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

We may have lost Hugo Young, but the formerly US-backed right wing social
democratic perspective lives on in the shape of Shirley Williams. Her
contribution to the proposed realignment of British politics that is on
offer here has been considerable.

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Disillusionment 'offers best chance to break political mould since Thatcher'

Michael White and Sarah Hall
Tuesday September 23, 2003
The Guardian

The Liberal Democrats have their best chance since the Thacherite early
1980s to break the mould of British politics and win support from voters
disillusioned with the two main parties, party activists were told in
Brighton yesterday.

Despite being marginalised by the media, the Lib Dem perspective - in which
the old left/right spectrum is less important than authoritarian/liberal or
centralised/devolved options - strikes a chord with "great swaths of the
British electorate", leading allies of Charles Kennedy agreed.
At the annual Guardian debate on the Lib Dem conference fringe the MEP Nick
Clegg warned that following successes such as Thursday's byelection win in
Brent East the party would now be accused of being "too leftwing" by an
unholy alliance of Labour, the "irritating" media and the Tories.

But - like Mr Kennedy himself yesterday - the Guardian panelists agreed that
not since the SDP broke away from Labour in 1981-83 and failed to break the
mould in two elections have so many voters been simultaneously "pretty
unhappy" with the Tories and disappointed with Labour.
"A plague on both their houses finally seems to be taking hold in middle
Britain," said Mr Clegg, now adopted as prospective candidate in Lib Dem
held Sheffield Hallam.
David Laws, MP for Yeovil, predicted that the Blair coalition was breaking
up and that Gordon Brown would not be able to restore it.

Lady Williams, herself a former Labour cabinet minister in the 1970s - and
one of the chief SDP defectors - shared the meeting's exuberance and said
the Lib Dem values were all in the "same quadrant" - on Iraq, civil
liberties, freedom, the environment, internationalism and the public
services.

But she also warned party activists that their policies are still too fuzzy.
"It's no good hiding behind the wonderful success of Brent. We are too
fuzzy, our central themes are not clear enough, so that when people say
'what do Liberal Democrats stand for?' it is very difficult to give them an
answer," she told an audience of 350.

One potentially fuzzy element yesterday was that Mr Laws, the former banker
who inherited Yeovil from Paddy Ashdown, defended competition, choice and
free trade as part of the Liberal Democrat mix of social liberalism and
resistance to "our inclination to nanny people in their own interests".

But Lembit Opik, MP for Montgomeryshire, and Lady Williams were both
critical of competition in the NHS, where Lady Williams called patients
"consumers as captives" - effectively denied choice. "There really are
things which are natural monopolies, the railways are one of them." There
was loud applause.

Appealing for more liberalism, Mr Opik also echoed Mr Laws on liberty when
he said the party needed to "feel the fear and do it anyway, get elected and
become a parliament that ultimately trusts people to trust themselves".

But Mr Laws stood his ground on "the value of competition" as being "the
most difficult issue for us as a party".