Letter to the Economist - Liberal party name - May 2015 - Printable Version +- LIBERAL TALK (http://talk.liberal.org.uk) +--- Thread: Letter to the Economist - Liberal party name - May 2015 (/showthread.php?tid=29) |
Letter to the Economist - Liberal party name - May 2015 - ReadingLib - 12-10-2015 Your recent piece on the perilous state of the LibDems(“Not Dead Yet”,May 16th) speculated that the party may fall back on a change of name to the Liberal Party. Unfortunately for them that name is already taken. When the Liberals and SDP voted to merge in 1988, they created a fresh party and registration with the electoral commission, initially as the Social and Liberal Democrats. Remember that? In fact many members of the two parent parties resisted the merger, and my understanding is that within a year, the Liberal Party had relaunched itself and we can claimed with considerable justification to be the continuation of that radical, centrist Liberal tradition. The political experiment that is the LibDems, a compromise between Liberals and Social Democrats, now appears to be drawing towards its inevitable conclusion. It was a dead-end which seems to think it can re-invent itself by simply calling itself Liberal. That is a name and philosophy the real Liberal Party will never surrender |