Are The Lib Dems On Board?

We need to renationalise the railways, uniquely without compensation in view of the manner of their privatisation, as the basis for a national network of public transport free at the point of use, including the reversal of bus route and, where possible, rail line closures going back to the 1950s. Will the Lib Dems promise that? No, of course not.

At the end of the day, however good individuals in the Lib Dems may be, they are not as a party an adequate vehicle for civil liberties, local communitarian populism, the indefatigable pursuit of single issues, the Nonconformist social conscience, the legacy of Keynes and Beveridge, traditional moral and social values, consumer protection, conservation rather than environmentalism, national sovereignty, a realistic foreign policy, the Commonwealth, the peace activism historically exemplified by Sir Herbert Samuel, redress of economic and political grievances in the countryside, and the needs and concerns of areas remote from the centres of power both in the United Kingdom and in each of its constituent parts.

Instead, as a party, the Lib Dems are defined by the betrayal of Gaitskellism over Europe, by the betrayal of both Gaitskellism and Christian Socialism over nuclear weapons, by the decadent social libertinism of Roy Jenkins, by the comprehensive schools mania of Shirley Williams, by her regret at not having resigned in protest at past Labour measures to restrict immigration, and by a fanatical hatred of trade unions and therefore of the public sector.