The Meeting the Challenge website has suddenly had a rush of articles posted on it. Thus far I’ve only had a chance to read Lembit Opik’s piece.
Pretty much everything I’ve ever read by Lembit has been on these lines, which can basically be summed up as “feel the fear and do it anyway”. I have to say I agree with him, even if he is, again as usual, notably light on detail.
I really don’t think there is space in the UK political arena for three parties to rush headlong into the centre ground. That isn’t to say that the Lib Dems should rush off in the opposite direction, but it is to say that we will probably do a lot better by identifying what we stand for and robustly promoting it than constantly looking over our shoulders at what the others are doing an responding accordingly. In some respects, Cameron is doing us a favour by attempting to narrow the space between him and New Labour.
As Lembit says, having a policy that is opposed by 60% of the population still gives you an awfully large constituency to target.