Tom – glad to see my piece was read beyond LD circles, though I’m afraid I only just found your comment. I want to say though that I don’t see how you can sustain an argument that the LDs have no centre-left roots. In the first place, I’d simply cite Hobhouse, Keynes and Beveridge, the last two of whom were cited by Ed Miliband in his first leader’s speech at Labour conference as being influences on him. More widely, you seem to take ‘centre-left’as being very narrowly defined as far as the economy is concerned when you dismiss LD centre-left credentials by saying that we have ‘no base in the working class or organised labour’. The ‘working class’ has long ceased to vote cohesively. Indeed, simply having a base in the w-c does not by definition mean you are on the centre-left (Thatcher being an example). The LDs continue to win hundreds of thousands if not millions of working-class votes. Going back much further, the old Liberal Party was strongly supported by many unions. Meanwhile, it was the Liberal Party which advocated co-operative ownership and more power for workers throughout the 1950s to 1970s. I think you ned to be careful about writing us all off.