Heady days
THE Liberal Democrats go to their conference in Bournemouth next week with their hopes high. Buoyed by a startling victory in the Romsey by-election in May, Charles Kennedy, the party's leader, says he believes that he can double the party's present total of 47 MPS at the next election. The Liberal Democrats have always been good at talking up their chances. But those who remember David Steel's rallying cry to his party activists in 1981, “Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government”, will take such predictions with a decent pinch of salt.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Heady days”
From the September 16th 2000 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionDiscover more
British MPs vote in favour of assisted dying
A monumental social reform is closer to being realised
The slow death of a Labour buzzword
And what that says about Britain’s place in the world
Britain’s Supreme Court considers what a woman is
At last. Britons had been wondering what those 34m people who are not men might be
Can potholes fuel populism?
A new paper looks at one explanation for the rise of Reform UK
Are British voters as clueless as Labour’s intelligentsia thinks?
How the idea of false consciousness conquered the governing party