Liberal Democrats: A Man’s Party?

If a novelist set out to write a story about a political party cutting its own throat, the writer would be hard pressed to invent a more astonishing chain of events than that which now transfixes Westminster. The Lib Dems, having built a reputation as a sensible party with level headed, if not exciting people in it, who were pretty solid and reliable, have managed to somehow behave in a way so undisciplined and irrational that it is doubtful whether it can recover its electoral position. Yes there was the Huhne scandal, but the party weathered that and held the vacated seat, to everybody’s surprise.

What is now unfolding is a spectacle of a number of aggrieved women who feel at the very least that their personal space has been invaded, a report which suggests that while nothing criminal happened an apology is due, and a number of men trumpeting even that would be out of order as the accused has done nothing for which even good manners requires some considerate response.

The details and the ramifications are all consuming to those engaged, but wholly irrelevant to the political crisis now engulfing the Liberal Democrats. The impression in the wider world outside Westminster is that this is a men’s  party in which women are not taken seriously, nor even treated with decency.

Unless something is done fast to end this disgraceful saga, the electoral consequences will be calamitous. And rightly so.

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