The Liberal landslide of 1906 was, George Dangerfield observed, a victory from which they never recovered. One hundred and four years later, the success of the Liberal Democrats in 2010 – one million extra votes and Nick Clegg’s appointment as Deputy Prime Minister in a coalition government – now looks very similar.
“The little party always gets smashed,” Angela Merkel told David Cameron in 2010. But there was nothing inevitable about the Lib Dems losing 48 seats on election night. It reflected something much more profound than the sense of betrayal engendered by voting to treble tuition fees: the failure of the Lib Dems to say what they were for.
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