Lib Dems: your country needs you.

The Liberal Democrats have been in conference this week and they make easy targets for ridicule. Rarely has a party collapsed so completely in the polls. Yet it is too easy to sit back and enjoy their discomfiture as a strong 'Liberal' or 'liberal' or even 'centre' party is essential to the preservation of our democracy. Left to themselves the two main parties may well slide towards the extremes - especially, I think, a populist Tory party fuelled by millions of Daily Mail reading voters. The historical parallel I would draw is the destruction of Germany's Liberal party at the hands of Bismarck in the 1880s. It left a void at the heart of German politics for two generations that would eventually be filled by bad men. The consequences we know only too well. So for now we may pour vitriol on the likes of Clegg, Huhne and company but if the Liberal Democrats are wiped off the political map we may all pay a heavy price in the long term. I therefore trust that the guardians of the party will seek to rescue it from the ignominious fate that seems to face the Liberal Democrats next election by reasserting their vital principles.