Mrs,M L Bonwick-Jones, define "right-wing". You almost certainly mean what are in fact Liberal and Whig ideas rather than Tory ones: everything to do with Thatcherism for example; or an interventionist foreign policy.

As I explained, immigration by successive waves of people like that is what turned the age-old Tory subculture into the Conservative Party. That is what the Conservative Party: I device for making Tories vote and campaign for Liberals. Unlike in the past, most of them no longer even realise.

The Lib Dems do not have to cling to the Conservatives. They could easily vote against the bills they don't like and vote for the bills they do like. After all, this is why parliament votes in the first place.

cgcenet - you have buried your head in the sand, I'm afraid..I am not "taking as gospel" anyone's word, least of all that of Liberal Vision die-hards, but what Ryan wrote is accurate, what David Laws argues is accurate, and reports of what has been discussed, and agreed - by ALL leading cabinet/parliamentary Lib Dems..the realignment pact for 2015 in some Lib Dem/Labour marginals..this is no plot, or wish-fulfilment, but is a factual agreement and strategy, whether you like it or not...sorry!

@Mrs,M L Bonwick-Jones,
Sorry, i do not understand your above comment, please elaborate.

@nourredine

I agree, they're either for or against, and at the moment they're only for because they want to prop up this notion of "strong government". Clegg himself said "it's not our bill". So my question is, how many more bad bills will it take till the Lib Dems wake up and grow a backbone?

@gerry,
"Tory voters will be encouraged by Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Laws to vote for Lib Dems in seats where Labour is the main challenger and Tories nowhere.."
It is too premature to say that, wait to hear if Mr Huhne is convicted first because if he is we will see the tories v lib/dem in Mr Huhne's constituency.

"Clegg and all leading Lib Dems 100% reject the notion of left and right, as you argue..they say they are neither, they are liberals...and Lib Dems in 2012 are as a party 100% anti-collectivist, anti-union, anti-socialist, etc etc...where have you been the last 2 years?"
The lib/dem will be swollen by the tories by 2015 and lib/dem will be fragmented and will be in small percentage left 5-6%

"The Lib Dems can never govern alone. They rely on coalitions. The problem is, transferring from one party to the other looks like flip-flopping.....Their best hope of long-term influence lies in a merger with one of the major political parties."

The three party system is quite unstable in this way. As a centre-right Liberal I would prefer a 4 party system (left; Centre-left; Centre-Right; Right) rather than a merger of LDs and Tories with its protectionism and religious and socially conservative instincts. Even the Tories economic liberalism favours big business over small business.

@Gerry

"Lib Dems in 2012 are as a party 100% anti-collectivist, anti-union, anti-socialist, etc etc... where have you been the last 2 years?"

That is not entirely correct. The leadership of the party may well be largely/increasingly classical liberal in orientation, but quite a chunk of the membership - and certainly the activists - are not. There are plenty of activists who still occupy ground that is recognisably centre-left. Many of the measures voted on/reaffirmed at conference last week were clearly of that flavour.

Whether that makes any difference, given the leadership has charted a different course, is a separate question.

sorry that last sentence doesn't make sense. I was trying to post under my real name which is Alex Macfie.

@gerry: As I have said before an electoral pact would breach the Lib Dem party constitution, would be most unlikely to get past conference and would split the party if it did happen. The pro-pact "National Lib Dems" would be unlikely to get 70–80 seats under a pact as they would be up against independent Lib Dem candidates. In short, it would be like the 1920s and 1930s all over again for the Lib Dems.

The Conservative Party has been hoovering up Liberals for a very long time: Country Whigs, Patriot Whigs, Liberal Unionists, Liberal Imperialists, National Liberals as one of whom Michael Heseltine first sought election to Parliament, Alfred Roberts’s daughter, those around the Institute of Economic Affairs (although its founders and its founding backer, like Roberts, never actually joined), and now the Liberal Democrats.

Among those last, the most blatantly obvious outrider or trailblazer is Elizabeth Truss, a veteran anti-monarchist campaigner, and also possessed of most unorthodox opinions regarding the institution of marriage, but whom the Conservative hierarchy forced upon a safe Conservative seat in time for the 2010 General Election.

It is entirely incorrect to say that members of the present Coalition are the first Liberal Cabinet Ministers since the War. By the time that he was Home Secretary between 1954 and 1957, Gwilym Lloyd George had ceased to be a member of either of the Liberal parties that had each separately asked him to lead it in 1945, but nor had he joined the Conservative Party. One third of the Cabinet Ministers dismissed in one night by Harold Macmillan were National Liberals, raising yet more among the many serious questions about how conservative or Tory the sacked six’s economic views, which went on to become monetarism, really were or were not, are or are not.

The feud between the former Miss Roberts and the present Lord Heseltine was fundamentally and ultimately an intra-Liberal affair, and it remains so. Even if vicariously and posthumously, Margaret Thatcher’s father was the last great Liberal commercial magnate from the provinces to exercise national political power.

The Conservative Party is itself therefore two parties in one, which would be entirely separate in many other countries, competing hardly at all for the same votes and co-operating hardly at all on any issue of policy. The metropolitan, urban, capitalist, secular, libertarian, make-the-world-anew party has finally defeated and banished the provincial, rural, protectionist, church-based, conservative, mind-our-own-business party. The Whigs have finally defeated and banished the Tories. But preferably in a context of electoral reform, which can only suit the Tories down to the ground.

They are not the only ones. As it took shape, Labour adapted itself both to Radical Liberalism and to populist Toryism, depending on the pre-existing culture at least of its target electorate. Labour was never the party of anything like the whole of the working classes, nor did those classes ever provide anything like all of its support. There was never any incongruity about the presence of middle or upper-class people in the Labour Party, and not least among Labour MPs. Nor about their having come from, and far from cast off, either Liberal or Tory backgrounds, routinely including activism, and indeed parliamentary service.

Both Radical Liberalism and populist Toryism were very open to central and local government action. They were therefore open to many aspects of the never-dominant Socialist strand in Labour as surely as they acted as checks and balances on it. Deeply rooted in the chapels, the Radicals had a pronounced streak of moral and social conservatism, especially where intoxication and gambling were concerned. Toryism, properly so called, upholds the organic Constitution, believes in carefully controlled importation and immigration, and advocates a realist foreign policy which includes a strong defence capability used only most sparingly and to strictly defensive ends. And so on.

The movement that drank deeply from both of these wells did in fact deliver social democracy in this country, a good both in itself and in its prevention of a Communist revolution. It is time to reconstitute that movement.

"In the Labour party, there is stubborn opposition to private sector involvement in the health service, despite a wealth of evidence illustrating that increased competition enhances the performance and efficiency of hospitals."

Sorry, Mr Shorthouse, there is no evidence for the beneficial effects of private sector involvement and competition in the health services. It is dogma. It is the so-called modernisers who are slavishly adhering to worn-out positions and polices.

"a wealth of evidence illustrating that increased competition enhances the performance and efficiency of hospitals."

What is this evidence? Where can we find it? Who authored it?

"But these liberal, pro-market reforms - based on close inspection of evidence - have made this country, slowly but surely, better."

Again, where is this evidence you speak of? When you say close inspection do you really mean 'cursory glance
then twist the facts so we can present our argument even though we know it's patently wrong'?

You an your kind are a blight on this country and the face of the earth. Accept facts and act accoridng to them and not your dogmatic belief in a foolsih notion of a self regulating free market.

funnily enough there are no well known political leaders of the libertarian right, presumably as this is the road to nihilism, via chaos, which seems to be the road this coalition is on. and no one has successfully run a country that way, though there may well have been a few unsuccessful attempts.

but you can of course give it a go, but who is going to keep the conservative name when you divorce?

This article is just wrong, completely WRONG! If the Lib Dems were to merge with one of the main parties, the party would just disappear. It would have no more influence because it would not exist. And to say, "The Lib Dems can never govern alone," is just defeatist claptrap as far as the Lib Dems are concerned; you never know what is going to happen. A pact with the Tories parties might allow the Lib Dems to gain more seats at the next election than they would otherwise, but the tally of seats they would win in 2015 would be the ceiling. They would never get any more seats, because they would only be campaigning where the Tories would let them, and the party would be slowly absorbed into the Tories and would eventually be completely assimilated. Where are the National Liberals now? The answer is, "Nowhere." "National Liberalism" is not even a concept anymore in modern UK politics. That would be the fate of the Lib Dems if they went into any sort of long term electoral arrangement with the Tories -- first a sub-brand, then total assimilation with no trace of the original party at all. The only reason this sort of idea is put about is that some Tories want to use it to return to the party system of the 1950s: a two-party system where they are in power more often than not, with no pesky third party taking away a lot of their votes.

After the next election the Lib dems will almost certainly completely cease to exist as a political force. The electorate will wreak revenge on Clegg and his ambitious treachery, dumping support for this former decent party and casting it into the oubliette of History. Clegg may be elevated to the House of Lard, but that too will be seen as the ignominy of Judas.
The whole Party system is corrupt. We need legislation which will ensure and enshrine any Political promises made before an election be implemented during the course of the following Parliament, if the Party which made the promises forms a government.
This simple piece of legislation would purge deceit from the hustings and invigorate our democracy.
We need democracy as never before in this rotting Kingdom of ours. Then perhaps we can be at peace and enjoys the fruits of peace.
THE FRUITS OF PEACE!

GAIA

In history and Mr Osbourne knows that very well as he study it.
The smaller party in a coalition always get swollen by the other big party which in this case the tories.
That is history saying.

Elrob - there will always be a Liberal party...as David Lindsay rightly proves,the Whigs/Liberals are the oldest "progressive" tradition in the UK.

On present patterns, Lib Dems will get maybe 14-16% of the vote in 2015, more if their realignment with the Tories successfully plays out in seats where they are second to Labour and the Tories nowhere, and in all other Liberal/Labour marginals..

The present Coalition proves that when Liberals and Tories combine, they are nearly always politically dominant and unstoppable...the one idea John Major got right!

I am on the modernising wing of the Labour Party, but the idea that those on the right of my party will join a rightwing alliance which is "liberal-minded" is absurd. You are effectively trying to say that Blair is a 'liberal conservative' and all his followers should join a Tory party. Politics doesn't work like that? We are liberal social democrats, not Tories.