Vince Cable’s announcements about shaking up the Liberal Democrats don’t exactly inspire confidence in the party as an energetic force in British politics. Despite pitching themselves squarely as the anti-Brexit party, and despite there being growing talk of a group of voters – and MPs – who feel politically homeless, the Lib Dems are struggling to attract attention or offer a sense of purpose.
The Lib Dem leader’s plan to open up the party’s membership to a ‘new class of supporters who pay nothing to sign up to the party’s values’ has sparked a fair bit of criticism from those who think this would leave the Lib Dems vulnerable to entryism, as happened when Ed Miliband enacted similar reforms in the Labour Party. The bigger problem for the Lib Dems, though, is that even with some funky new membership offers, they still aren’t giving prospective members a reason for joining up.
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