Labour Party, Lib Dem Party - where to now.

Like you, GG, I was a founder member of the SDP but unlike you was also one of those who built the Lib Dems and was a local and regional officer and Borough Councillor. So much work in almost thirty years, so much canvassing, leaflet writing and delivering, organising local and regional parties. All down the drain, because the Lib Dems entered into a coalition with a party which was our traditional opponent, and somewhere along the line lost sight of its principles, becoming, at best centrist, at worst, right of centre. I left the party after about two years of coalition, largely because I could not stand the way English education was going under Michael Gove, apparently without any protest from his coalition partners. I should put it the other way round. It wasn't so much that I left the party, but the party left me. What of the future? It's good to hear that new members are coming forward. I am hoping that Tim Farron will be the new leader, and the one to take the party forward in a new direction, back to the left of centre position it should rightfully occupy.

With regard to the Labour party - of course they need to choose a new leader and I will be looking at the candidates in great detail before I vote but I think what is important is the direction in which the Labour party goes and the ideology it adopts. I have had some thoughts about it over the past couple of days - in fact we had a spontaneous family get together with the eldest being 97 and then ranging gradually down to 14 and there were a lot of ideas and opinions but one of the common themes is that whilst regarding it's traditional voters - the Labour party must attract the more aspiring affluent voter and to do this it must recognize and adopt a more modern approach whilst retaining it's values of fairness.equity and compassion. We didn't get much further as I am sure these ideas will be devoped over the next few months