Doing well – not if you follow the logic of the website; the site claims the Liberal Democrats appeared from nowhere and have nothing to do with the Liberal Party, so the Liberal Party has lost all its Cornish Peers, MPs, and councillors bar two. Meanwhile a party that appeared as if by magic in 1988 has won all the parliamentary seats in Cornwall!
Wilberforce is clearly important to the Cornish con Libs, rather like the Mormons they wish to have him as a convert after death , along with the late Lib Dem peer Jo Grimond.
The Liberal Party is not a simple successor to the Whigs, it is the result of a merger of Whigs, Radicals and Peelites, however to admit that might legitimise a later merger so it is conveniently air-brushed out. I could go on, but what’s the point.
What’s my beef, by using the name ‘Liberal Party’ the con Libs are benefiting from the work of others and showing their contempt for democracy. At least some of these guys were moved to try and get the party to call itself “Radical Liberals” to avoid the dishonesty, but were voted down at Assembly.
I’m not too worried about the ‘museum curators’ of the continuity Liberal Party, stuck in a parallel universe numbering their Assemblies 123 or whatever you are up to now. Nor the ‘armchair philosophers’ ideological purists, who engage endlessly in sterile and impotent debates to define a perfect form of Liberalism.
No, it’s the bitter and twisted, mainly ex Lib Dem councillors, who seek to hurt the Liberal Democrats by joining the continuity Liberal Party, who get up my nose. Now for a party that claims to be undiluted and genuinely Liberal, you aren’t very fussy who you take. You’ve had some dodgy characters whose only motivation is to dis their former colleagues in the Lib Dems, (remember Tony in Chard).
Take the Bideford councillors less than six months after being elected as Lib Dems, they come and join the con Libs, because of a great matter of liberal principle, no because one of the Lib Dem councillors used to talk dirty down a phone line to some sad old gits, and their pastor told them to leave the ‘sinful Lib Dems’. (They clearly are unaware of Steve Radford’s views on legalising and regulating prostitution. I must enlighten them)
You Tom want an anti EU, yet moderate political party, however the con Libs were not formed as an anti EU liberal party, they fell out of love with the EU over a number of years. The commitment to leave the EU was a close run thing at Assembly, and if Radford is eclipsed as leader, it could all change back very quickly.
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