Odds are I'm getting cities mixed up, I know we've got Cllrs, the Lord Mayor and a target seat there but haven't looked at the numbers. Sheffield is definitely true though, and there are areas all over the place where the Tories are dead, which ones matters little (replace Hull and Liverpool into the above if you want).
But the thing is with any party that under FPTP it needs to be a broad church--jaws drop at times when I describe myself as a Liberal Socialist, which confuses the politically illiterate. Current policy is taking the party in a more avowedly liberal direction, whether that's left or right is, as we're essentially proving, pure semantics.
Without the SDP merger, we'd be nothing, and there are a large number of members who are still avowedly social democrats (the authors of reinventing the state being some, one of whom is also conference chair).
But...
The 5th split I mentioned was a bunch of the old Radical wing who went to join Labour instead. A bunch of them came back with the SDP (obviously, not the same people)...
Anyway, another half hour of interruptions for the comment, so apologies for unedited ramble.
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momijizukamori
Re: Also, in response to your headline:
Date: 2008-Sep-16, Tuesday 15:13 (UTC)But the thing is with any party that under FPTP it needs to be a broad church--jaws drop at times when I describe myself as a Liberal Socialist, which confuses the politically illiterate. Current policy is taking the party in a more avowedly liberal direction, whether that's left or right is, as we're essentially proving, pure semantics.
Without the SDP merger, we'd be nothing, and there are a large number of members who are still avowedly social democrats (the authors of reinventing the state being some, one of whom is also conference chair).
But...
The 5th split I mentioned was a bunch of the old Radical wing who went to join Labour instead. A bunch of them came back with the SDP (obviously, not the same people)...
Anyway, another half hour of interruptions for the comment, so apologies for unedited ramble.