labour doesn't surprise me one bit.

but i am surprised by the liberal democrats. i don't really understand why they keep calling themselves "liberal" when for the past years they have been anything but liberal.

> However, you should know that this [liberal democracy] has precisely nothing to do with the Liberal Democrats in the UK. The Liberal Democrats are so named because they're the result of a merger between the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party. The best combination of the names was "Liberal Democrats." -- cpast

https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/7812

That's a meme in politics, the words in party names have nothing to do with the ideas they commonly represent. Names in this space just work according to the "laws" of marketing.

The term liberal is only a magnitude, it's not a vector. In common parlance, people understand it to mean social liberalism, i.e. a proponent of personal freedoms; but in most parties, it's much more likely to refer to economic liberalism, i.e. laissez-faire market policies.

That said, I don't know enough about the UK's political parties to know along what axis the Lib Dems consider themselves to be "liberal".

> I agree. I'm disappointed in particular by Labour's approach to this too.

why would you expect labour to be better?

they are more authoratitian than the Tories

they brought in the Identity Register, the Terrorism Act (90 day detention without charge), the RIP Act (forced decryption), attempted to remove the right to trial by jury and the defence of double jeopardy

along with countless more

Fair point

>The conservatives have lurched so far right that I can't help but feel that Labour is having to move in that direction too just to have a fighting chance of winning the next election.

Oh no, political parties moving in response to the expressed will of the general public in a democracy. What an outrage! How dare a party in a democratic system change its policy to match voter preferences. Won't someone think of the people that know better??

> Oh no, political parties moving in response to the expressed will of the general public in a democracy.

Consider a very simple model of a two party system, expressing views on one left/right axis. Members of the population vote for the political party that is closest to their views on that axis. Political parties want to win as many votes as possible.

Under that model and those assumptions, if one party moves in a particular direction, the 'correct' behaviour for the other party is to move in that direction also to capture more votes, regardless of what the underlying 'will' of the general voting public is.

> political parties moving in response to the expressed will of the general public in a democracy

They dont care about the people, they are simply occupying the political ground that has been abandoned by the other party.