Cicero's Songs

In the course of the mid twentieth century the Liberal Party, that great organ of the Victorian state was destroyed. In his 1935 book, "The Strange Death of Liberal England" , George Dangerfield analysed the course of social and political change that had altered the course of the country and in the process destroyed the Liberal Party. Of course the factors that lead to the Liberal eclipse were both long and short term, and as a work of history the book is a commentary on a whole raft of social and political evolution. From the 1960s onward, the Liberal Party began to recover. It established itself as a party of protest, of practical pavement politics, and from this niche it made steady progress up until the 2005 election. The impact of the vote against the Iraq war moved the party into a new position as a radical conscience, as it had been during the Boer War, which created the conditions for the Liberal landslide of 1906. In 2010, however, the party did not achieve a lands...

I have held off commenting on the UK general election in too much detail. Partly because I have found it so disappointingly provincial that it has been a challenge to sort between the electoral shallowness of each of the pitiful manifestos. At a time when the UK faces existential challenges: the threat of another European war; a global economy whose life-support is fading by the day; a failing and spectacularly expensive public sector; and any of another thirty or forty serious problems, it is shocking how weak the response of the politicians has been. Yet in truth I do not blame the political talking heads themselves- in the end it is the ignorance of the voters that is driving the most dumbed-down election that I can ever remember. The sophistication of the parties' voter ID systems has already eliminated the most egregious points of debate, and 90% of the electoral resources of the political parties are now focused on the 20% of seats that will actually decide the outcome, and...

The achievements of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats in government have been remarkable. In the face of an economic crisis where many commentators were predicting the economic collapse of the UK, the coalition has taken decisions which have left the country in far better shape than they found it. Britain has performed better than almost all its peers, and there is little doubt, that in raising the tax threshold and defeating the SNP referendum to break up the UK, it has been Liberal Democrats who have been the first out of the trenches. Liberal Democrat ministers, from Ed Davey to Steve Webb, to David Laws, have proven to be better informed, better prepared and far more effective than their Conservative colleagues. From the point of view of managerial efficiency, the Liberal Democrats have undoubtedly proven that they have all the requisite skills and more to deliver effective government of this country. So it is more than a little frustrating to see the party continue to languis...