Lib Dem deadline

Published on 17/09/2012 00:00

Is THERE any prospect of a Liberal Democrat revival before the general election of 2015? It all depends on how effectively it can ease the transition form coalition partner to an independent, renewed and radical party in the year before it. David Torrance is right (Perspective, 15 September), the budget of spring 2014 should be the point when it considers giving notice that the coalition agreement is to end.

It is wrong to suggest that its credibility will be wholly in tatters as a result of the pact with the Conservatives. As it gathers in Brighton this week for its annual conference, it will know that it has only 18 months in which to get that programme together.

It can point to achievements in raising tax thresholds for the less well off. It may well be able to say it played a mature role in helping to reduce the budget deficit. It can say with truth that it has enhanced devolution, albeit through the convoluted Scotland Act. It has acted as a brake on some of the more divisive policies that the Conservatives would have liked to enact.

By the time of the independence referendum in 2014, it may well have produced through the Steel Commission stronger devolution proposals

The majority of its core support may never forgive the coalition agreement. Whether it does or not depends in the next year on a mature assessment of what it has achieved and a clear pointer to where it wants to go after 2015.

Bob Taylor

Shiel Court

Glenrothes, Fife