Liberal Democrats

Liberal Democrats are a social liberal political party in the United Kingdom which supports constitutional and electoral reform, progressive taxation,wealth taxation, environmentalism, human rights laws, cultural liberalism, banking reform and civil liberties
The party was formed in 1988 by a merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party. The two parties had formed the electoral SDP–Liberal Alliance for seven years before then, since the SDP's formation. The Liberals had been in existence for 129 years and in power under leaders such as Gladstone, Asquith and Lloyd George.
Nick Clegg was elected Leader in 2007. At the 2010 general election, Liberal Democrats won 23% of the vote and 57 of the 650 seats, making them the third-largest party in the House of Commons, behind the Conservatives with 307 and Labour with 258. No party having an overall majority; the Liberal Democrats became the junior partners in a coalition government with the Conservatives, with Clegg becoming Deputy Prime Minister and other Liberal Democrats taking up ministerial positions.


The opening line to the preamble of the Liberal Democrats constitution is "The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity. Most commentators describe the party as centrist. In 2011 party leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said "But we are not on the left and we are not on the right. We have our own label: Liberal.
There are two main strands of distinct ideology within the party, social liberals and the economic liberals, more commonly known as Orange Bookers. The social liberals are seen as being the more traditionally centre-left end of the party with Orange Bookers being more towards the centre. The principal difference between the two is that the Orange Bookers tend to support greater choice and competition and as such aiming to increase social mobility through increasing economic freedom and opportunity for those with more disadvantaged backgrounds. Whereas the social liberals are more commonly associated with directly aiming to increase equality of outcome through state means. Correspondingly, Orange Bookers tend to favour cutting taxes for the poorest in order to increase opportunity contrasting with social liberals who would rather see higher spending on the disadvantaged to reduce income inequality.

After the first of three general election debates on 15 April 2010, a ComRes poll put the Liberal Democrats on 24%.On 20 April, a YouGov poll put the Liberal Democrats on 34%, the Conservatives on 33% and Labour on 28%.
In the general election held on 6 May 2010, the Liberal Democrats won 23% of the vote and 57 seats in the House of Commons. The election returned a hung parliament with no party having an absolute majority. Negotiations between the Lib Dems and the two main parties occurred in the following days. David Cameron became Prime Minister on 11 May after Gordon Brown's resignation and the Liberal Democrats formed a coalition government with the Conservative Party, with Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister and other Liberal Democrats in the cabinet.Three quarters of the Liberal Democrat's manifesto pledges went into the Programme for Government.
An academic study has suggested that the party has been able to secure a greater degree of control over government policy than their relative proportion of seats, with the party taking 75% of their manifesto pledges into the programme for government. Though some say this has had an adverse effect on the party's distinctiveness in the eyes of the voters. 
Since joining the coalition poll ratings for the party have fallen,particularly following the government's support for raising the cap on tuition fees with Liberal Democrat MPs voting 27 for, 21 against and 8 abstaining.
On 8 December 2010, the eve of a House of Commons vote on the raising of the UK's undergraduate tuition fee cap to £9,000, an opinion poll conducted by YouGov recorded voting intention figures of Conservatives 41%, Labour 41%, Other Parties 11% and Liberal Democrats 8%.[86] the lowest level of support recorded for the Liberal Democrats in any opinion poll since September 1990. In the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election, 2011 held on 13 January 2011, the Liberal Democrats gained 31.9% of the vote, a 0.3% increase despite losing to Labour. In a by-election in the South Yorkshire constituency of Barnsley in March 2011, the Liberal Democrats fell from a 2nd place at the general election to 6th,.
In council elections held on 5 May 2011, the Liberal Democrats suffered heavy defeats in the Midlands, North and Scotland. They also lost heavily in the Welsh assembly and Scottish Parliament, where several LibDem candidates lost their deposits.
According to the Guardian
"They lost control of Sheffield council – the city of Clegg's constituency – were ousted from Liverpool, Hull and Stockport, and lost every Manchester seat they stood in. Overall, they got their lowest share of the vote in three decades".
Clegg admitted that the party had taken "big knocks" due to a perception that the coalition government had returned to the Thatcherism of the 1980s.
As part of the deal that formed the coalition, it was agreed to hold a referendum on the Alternative Vote, in which the Conservatives would campaign for First Past the Post and the Liberal Democrats for Alternative Vote. The referendum, held on 5 May 2011, resulted in First Past the Post being chosen over Alternative Vote by two-thirds of voters.
In May 2011, Nick Clegg revealed plans to make the House of Lords a mainly elected chamber, limiting the number of peers to 300, 80% of whom would be elected with a third of that 80% being elected every 5 years by Single transferable vote.The Lib Dem secretary of state for energy and climate change Chris Huhne also announced plans for halving UK carbon emissions by 2025 as part of the "Green Deal" in the 2010 Liberal Democrat manifesto.
In council elections held on 3 May 2012, the Lib Dems lost more than three hundred councillors, leaving them with fewer than three thousand for the first time in the party's history.