Liberal Democrats
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The Liberal Democrats, often referred to as "Lib Dems," are a minor party in the United Kingdom, historically occupying third place in seats.[1]
They were formed from an alliance of the old Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party and they have 56 MPs in the House of Commons, 105 Lords in the House of Lords, and only one in the European Parliament. The Party's leader is Nick Clegg.
Most Lib Dems are liberals; the internal spectrum is mostly between social liberalism and economic liberalism. On the traditional left-right spectrum, most place the party in the centre or centre-left. The Political Compass puts the party on the socially liberal side of their two-dimensional spectrum, with both the Labour Party and the Conservatives on the socially authoritarian side.[2]
On the social liberalism side, they support things like civil liberties, reviewing the law on recreational drugs, anti-discrimination laws, same-sex marriages, abortion, and genetic research. With economic liberalism they support more progressive taxes and wealth redistribution. They like increased public service provision, fiscal rules, immigration, multilateralism, intervention in other countries only with UN backing,[3] increasing aid spending. They like fighting global warming, disestablishing the Church of England, a written constitution and electoral and government reform.[4] They favour replacing the UK's current Trident nuclear deterrent with a less expensive alternative. [5]
From the preamble to the party's constitution states:
“”The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity. We champion the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals, we acknowledge and respect their right to freedom of conscience and their right to develop their talents to the full. We aim to disperse power, to foster diversity and to nurture creativity. We believe that the role of the state is to enable all citizens to attain these ideals, to contribute fully to their communities and to take part in the decisions which affect their lives.
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| —The Liberal Democrats Constitution |
Currently they are in government in coalition with the Conservatives and it is unclear how far they will insist on the coalition government doing anything about these points. Thus far, the general consensus is that they haven't done much.
When the Liberal-SDP merger occurred in 1988, a small number of members of the Liberal Party disagreed with merging and continued as a separate party, sometimes jokingly referred to as the Continuity Liberal Party. They have about 100 local councillors but no Parliamentary representation. They and others get annoyed when sloppy commentators who should know better talk about the "Liberal Party" as being a member of the government coalition.
[edit] Factions
The Liberal Democrats have (at least) two internal factions despite being smaller than the Tories and Labor. The first, and at the moment more powerful group is known as the Orange Bookers,[6] who campaign for not only social liberalism but strong market liberalism and some austerity measures. Current head of the Liberal Party Nick Clegg is a member of this group, as are most of the leading Lib Dems, and they are largely responsible for the rightward drift of the party. While they started off popular enough after the merger with the Conservative Party they have become increasingly unpopular among both the public and the left-wing of their own party, and it's expected that they may lose a lot of influence after the next election. They've been noted as being ideologically similar to David Cameron and his group of moderate conservatives within the Conservative Party, though they're still closer to the political center.[7]
The second faction is mainly comprimised of the Beveridge Group, who are social liberals that hark back to John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge as their primary inspiration. They are more firmly center-left, being probably to the left of Tony Blair's New Labour but still much more moderate and market friendly than "Old Labour". They are more skeptical of the Con-Lib coalition and tend to dislike the Orange Bookers, viewing them as somewhat "market fundamentalist", particularly in their support for privatization. They appear to have lost most of their influence after the somewhat ineffectual leadership of Charles Kennedy (who was more or less a social liberal) and they've been trying to get back in power for a while but seem to have given up for now, either because they're too weak/ineffecual to do anything or think Clegg is already doing enough damage to his faction in the public eye. Either way with the projected hit that the Lib Dems will probably take in the next election both groups are probably going to want to stick together for now.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Share of UK popular vote since 1832
- ↑ UK Parties 2008
- ↑ The Liberal Democrats on International Affairs
- ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Liberal Democrats#Policies.
- ↑ The Liberal Democrats on Defence.
- ↑ They are named after the book The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism, which was mainly written by free-market Liberal Democrat politicians
- ↑ How the Orange Bookers took over the Lib Dems