The other day, I was pondering how Lib Dems ever get any votes at all in national elections.Unlike UKIP, where the party is in tune with the electorate on almost every single policy, the Liberal Democrats are largely out of step on most issues. They are 'very big on telling voters what to want'.
If UKIP were ever to make a breakthrough under first-past-the-post, it would surely spell the end of the Liberal Democrats as 'the alternative' which they so assiduously pretend to be.
That they gain votes in local elections is perfectly understandable however, as they try very hard to campaign, politically neutrally, on local matters. They succeed and in fairness, often deserve their success.
In national voting and policy however, they rely entirely on the following:
1] That voters who supported them locally will automatically transfer allegiance in national elections without bothering to ask the important questions.
2] That a great many perceive them - very wrongly - to be 'in between the Conservatives and Labour. Hopefully as the LibLabCon is becoming ever more apparent, fewer will fall into this trap.
3] That nobody ever really knows their policies. If they did - their share of the vote would plummet.
4] That if Labour is supposed to be for the working man and Tories supposed to be for the wealthy, voters fail to discover that they truly are the party of the PC brigade, the left-leaning university lecturers, thwarted Greens, mad utopian europhiles, the proponents of the 'nanny state', government interference and sellout to Brussels merchants.
5] That they are not actually of the centre but are in fact, the most leftwing portion of the LibLabCon.
6] That leaving the polling booth, the majority of their voters would not be able to list three policies - or possibly even two which are in their manifesto! [And they brazenly and ironically claim that the voters do not know the BNP's agenda!]
Their success levels overall are undeserved. They have cooled a little in their desire for PR but still ask for it. It is something which would eventually see their destruction. They naively believe that it would be their route to power.
Coming fourth in the EU elections should have given them warning - success under PR is not the 'shoo-in' they had hoped it might be.
