Abstract: The period between Paddy Ashdown's resignation announcement and his departure was marked by several electoral tests for the Liberal Democrats. The Party's performance across the local elections and elections for the new Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales was uneven, but did lead to the establishment of two Labour-Liberal coalitions. When Charles Kennedy assumed the leadership in August 1999, the Party was a much stronger force than it had been in its early years. Eager to ensure the Liberal Democrats would retain their own identity, Kennedy moved away from Ashdown's strategy of 'constructive opposition' to the Blair government. His effective campaigning in the 2001 General Election saw the Party win 52 seats, the largest number for a third party since 1929, and the following years saw the Party take a more oppositional role with regards to Labour, most strikingly in the case of the Iraq War, where all 53 Liberal Democrat MPs voted against military action. In the 2005 General Election the Liberal Democrats achieved the largest parliamentary Liberal Party representation since 1923. But an internal ideological struggle, prompted by the publication of The Orange Book in 2004, was to have significant implications in the years to come.
Publication Year: 2019
Publication Date: 2019-09-13
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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