UK Parties: The Liberal Democrat party

[T_i_B]

9. I can' talk about Lib Dems in the Home Counties at the moment

I used to have a Home Counties Lib Dem as my MP (Colchester's Bob Russell, not perfect, but as good an MP as you'll get these days) but I honestly don't have any real idea of how things might pan out in Colchester this time around.

What I can say is that here in North East Derbyshire the Lib Dems used to be a strong presence in local government and used to be quite active. Then after they went into coalition their leaflets immediately became markedly more right wing in tone. And when local elections came around in 2011 they got virtually wiped out locally as people decided that there really isn't any need for a surrogate Tory party. And we haven't seen a single Lib Dem leaflet since 2011 so they've clearly given up round here.

Nearby the Lib Dems nearly took Sheffield Central from Labour in 2010 and also narrowly lost Chesterfield to Labour, but this time round I think Labour will make big gains at their expense in those constituencies.

The Lib Dems decline is not good for democracy as we do need a strong 3rd party offering a good alternative to the tripe from the main parties. And whilst their local leaflets could be dodgy in all kinds of ways, you could at least get a vague idea of what's going on with the local council from them.