Return of the Gladstonians

The reassertion of something resembling Toryism on the Conservative benches may be little short of miraculous, yet at the same time it ought not to be surprising. Nor should be, and nor is, the call by the likes of Ming Campbell and Philippe Sands for a "no-fly zone" (war) in Libya. The Lib Dems were the principal parliamentary cheerleaders for intervention in the black-shirted Wahhabi interest in Bosnia, the shroud of which is being waived in the course of the current debate. They supported action in that same interest in Kosovo, and they have consistently supported the war in Afghanistan. Their opposition to the Iraq fiasco would never have happened under Paddy Ashdown, was resisted by him, and was actively defied by at least one Lib Dem Peer. They are now simply reverting to type.

But where does that leave the continuing SDP, soldiering on in Bridlington and Aberavon? Where does it leave the rather larger continuing Liberal Party, which opposed and opposes the wars in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan? Where does it leave Michael Meadowcroft, who defected from the Liberals to the Lib Dems in the hope that the then-impending hung Parliament would turn out rather differently? Where does it leave Meadowcroft's old political partner, Tony Greaves, now on the Lib Dem benches in the Lords? And where does it leave the increasingly ubiquitous David Owen, known to be close to Ed Miliband, but presumably waiting, like so many of us, for electoral reform to deliver a significant political formation which neoliberal neocons would no more consider joining than would Stalinists, Trotskyists or Islamists?