republishing David Boyles excelent blog
The real fault line in the Lib Dems Well, people say to me with conviction: the Liberal Democrats are hopelessly split – between libertarian free marketeers and socialists. I protest in vain that I've never met either in the party, and I've been a member since 1979. I tell them, that rather against everyone's expectations, the party has been staggeringly united through the trauma of coalition. But it is too late to complain. The Great Division is now part of political mythology. It is said that a group of 'economic liberals’ – not a term I recognise – gathered around The Orange Book to wrest the party away from the wispy idealists. It is all so terribly reminiscent of the early 1980s, when a group of worldly and sophisticated social democrats were supposed to have stolen the centre ground of politics from the wispy-bearded idealists in the Liberal Party. These were both supposed to be victories by the realists over the idealists. But it didn