Parties that claim to be "like Labour, or only more so", or "like Labour used to be", rarely get very far, never do so for very long, and are never in fact what they claim to be.
Parties that claim to be "like the Tories, or only more so", or "like the Tories used to be", have an even more miserable record.
Even if only ever in one person, Respect has at different times won two seats in the House of Commons. UKIP has never won one.
But the Greens, whose pitch is broadly "like the Lib Dems, only more so", and "like the Lib Dems used to be", have won a seat and have their eyes on a couple more.
They even beat the Lib Dems to come third in the London Mayoral Election. UKIP and the Outer Left were nowhere.
Even the Greens' criticism of the EU is on a continuum with the remaining Liberal Party's pronounced hostility (it participated in No2EU - Yes to Democracy in 2009) and with the tiny remnant SDP's advocacy of outright withdrawal.
The Lib Dems have got what they had always wanted, and it is destroying them. That story is so old and so oft-recurring because it is so true.
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