We Need a Third, or Should That be Second Way

We now have our second, white, middle classed, Westminster and Cambridge educated, Englishman, both of whom are economic liberals and contributed to the Orange Book. Not that I'm holding any of that against any of them. I've met both in person and have had conversations with them.

What I, and it seems a number of fellow Liberal Democrats, have issues with is just where is the voice that represents me and where is the difference going to come from. Now I've watched the Consevatives who I used to pillor in Kingston move closer but not that close to my opinion and I've watch Labour (with the occasional exception of some of my MP's views) who I now face move through my position and out the other side, I must have blinked at some point.

Now if all we have to offer after all my time in the Liberal Democrats, roughly the lifetime of the party in its current form, is a shift in the same direction as Labour and the Tories have shifted what is left of those principles that I once so staunchly defended in Economics and Politics tutorials. Now I know from the traditional left/right graphs of where our party has aligned at General Election times that the last time we were this right of centre in outlook we were looking at lean times. Though we have made our gains over recent elections by being seen as being left of centre; so where is that voice? Is it left crying in the wilderness or possibly at a Westminster AA meeting? (And yes readers of this blog will recall that I was called by the BBC on the day of the previous resignation of a party leader was imminent because I was still supporting him)

For the moment put me down in the undecided column, not because I don't know who would make the best leader of our party at this time, I'd had a short list of three, but because I don't know yet which of the two slices of white bread on offer are must digestable.