A message of hope to the next Lib Dem leader: your electorate awaits you | Martin Kettle

The beaten-up party will rise again if it can speak to a modern Britain that is steeped in liberal values

There is always something more important to write about in any given week than the Liberal Democrats. Even when the party was thriving under the late Charles Kennedy, a cartoon by Matt in the Daily Telegraph nailed the Lib Dem problem perfectly. He drew his cartoon in the intense autumn days after the 9/11 attack, which happened to coincide with the start of the party conference season. Two men with beards, turbans and rifles are standing in the mouth of an Afghan cave. One asks the other: “Any news from the Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth?” Squish.

So even in a week in which a new Lib Dem leader is elected to replace Nick Clegg, it still requires some chutzpah to focus on what is now at best only the fourth party in the land. For Clegg’s successor confronts a desolate political landscape with years of hard-won, steady incremental growth now laid waste. The BBC’s head of political research, David Cowling, ​recently turned to Milton to express the party’s situation: “Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.” So why bother?

Postindustrial Britain is a more generally liberal and democratic country than industrial Britain ever was

As Nick Clegg has pointed out, these are lean times for liberal parties in many countries, not just Britain

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