Britain needs the Lib Dems, says the Washington Post

Here's an encouraging article from an unexpected source:

The Lib Dems count for more than their current low representation suggests. Next year, the centre party will become political kingmaker if, as seems highly likely, neither Labour nor the Conservatives win a majority in the general election. It’s a role it has played for more than a hundred years. 

The centrists also matter in other ways beyond raw electoral calculation. At Westminster, the party stands for important but unfashionable causes - the defence of civil liberties and constitutional change - that don’t find a natural home with either of the two bigger parties.

Lib Dem influence may have already ensured that the Tories will be ejected from office. In last week’s local elections, tactical voting for opposition candidates brought about the Conservatives’ huge loss of more than 1000 council seats. 

According to modelling for the Times newspaper by Ben Ansell, an Oxford University professor of politics, tactical voting now makes it "very, very, very hard  for the Conservatives to win an outright majority."

That source is the Washington Post.

And there's more:

There is a traditional place for a Liberal voice in UK politics. The party was the first to champion British membership of the European Community and the last to accept Brexit. It is resolutely internationalist in outlook. It consistently advocates decentralization of the overmighty UK state, too, and challenges knee-jerk law-and-order legislation passed in the wake of populist outrage.

Personally, I have little time for environmental extremists who block the roads and make it impossible for commuters to go about their daily business. Nor did the republicans who attempted to disrupt King Charles III’s coronation elicit my sympathy. 

But it is hard not to feel a twinge of anxiety at the battery of legislation passed to limit the rights of demonstrators. As one of those arrested last weekend complained, "the police have dreamt up a new offence  - 'being in the vicinity of protesters'." The Lib Dems give voice to our doubts.