Defectors and the Liberal Party: 1910–2010: A Study of Inter-party Relations

Abstract

Unpopular as the Liberal Democrats are in the current opinion polls the party has stayed together, albeit in a dwindling form electorally. There have been no MPs or Peers defecting to either Labour or the Conservatives. In the past such poor showing led to wide-scale defections, but when you dig beneath the surface there were also many other reasons for a Liberal MP or peers to defect to another political party beyond dire electoral prospects. It is these other reasons which are the basis of Dr Alun Wyburn-Powell's in depth study on Liberal defectors. In a generally well-structured and laid out text, Dr Wyburn-Powell starts off by providing an overall summary of the book in his chapter entitled ‘Defectors and loyalists’. This is where we get the comprehensive analysis of who those defectors from the Liberal Party were between 1910 and 2010. Within this hundred-year period some 707 Liberal or Liberal Democrat MPs defected. To put this in the context of scale, this figure is several times the number of post-war Liberal MPs. Yet at the time it only made up a small percentage of the overall Liberal Party.