The Battle Ahead - no comments

How things have changed: the Lib Dems, apparently full of the young, the sensible, and the saintly, find themselves engaged in a sour-tinged leadership battle that seems highly likely to crown the dull, patrician Menzies Campbell - who must now attempt to hold together the SDP and the Gladstonian wings of his party.

Meanwhile, David Cameron (who is also dull and patrician, but is a long way from being a pensioner) appears either to have rediscovered the Conservative Party's ability to pick policies that aren't completely crass or designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator - an ability that few alive today can remember in action - or to smell Lib Dem blood. No doubt his new commitment to adopting our policy of replacing up-front, flat-rate tuition fees with variable fees, repaid over many years, won't be a big hit on campus. However, he has at least given his party a hope among professionals and progressive graduates, who want to see more people going to university, but don't believe that taxpayers should pay for tens of thousands of middle-class students to attend underfunded courses at underfunded establishments. This, I believe, can only hasten the decline of the Liberal Democrats among the "Generation Gap" group of 25 to 34-year-olds that the Tories have been targetting.

There's not much here to cheer Labour: the weaker the Lib Dems, the more likely their marginal seats tip over to the Tories, and the more the anti-Labour vote concentrates in the hands of a party that - under our current electoral system - is able to profit from a large, evenly-spread vote, the harder it's going to be for us. That's not the whole story, though: Cameron's attempts to provide a safe haven on his side for anti-Labour-government voters who would previously have balked at his party's reactionary tone, makes it less of a gamble for Lib Dems and for our own disgruntled supporters to protest.

Labour can't help what goes on inside the Liberal Democrats. The only course we can pursue is to continue to enhance the reputation we have earned for the running of the country since 1997, ensure we set the progressive agenda, and not seek reelection by default, but apply as much energy, and as much critical thought as the Tories' spin doctors say they are doing. Bear in mind, though, that David Cameron will continue to rifle through the bunch of keys as he seeks his exit from the Thatcherite graveyard, but that skeletal hand will creep ever closer to his ankle, ready to yank him back into the crypt.

Paul Anderson, Harry, and others, have interesting takes.