The Liberal Democratic party was formed in 1988 by a merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The Liberal Party was an alliance of Whigs and free-trade Peelites and Radicals formed during the 1850, whilst the SDP was founded on 26 March 1981. It was founded by four senior Labour Party ‘moderates’, dubbed the ‘Gang of Four’: Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams.

The Liberal Democratic Party is a lie of a name because they are neither liberal nor democratic.

They are not economically, laissez faire, liberals because they are highly interventionist. And they are not social liberal because they don’t promote rights such as euthanasia and prostitution.

They are not democrats because during the coalition they twice blocked democratic measures, one for an EU referendum and one for house of commons and constituency reform.

So if they are not liberal democrats, what are they? The answer is that they are socialists. Lefties. Not the rabid, class warfare, punish success socialism of the Labour party, but a touchy feely socialism of intervening to spend other people’s money to “do good”.

But of course this is a huge intellectual fraud because all socialism is evil. All socialism is based on envy. And all socialism seeks “social justice” and “redistribution”. So the Lib Dems are deluding themselves when they try and think that they are nice. Because they aren’t.

Unlike the other minor parties in England the Lib Dems return a good sprinkling of MPs, this is because their support is largely concentrated in a few seats, mostly in the South West. They have very strong constituency MPs and will not do as badly in the election as some people are thinking. The national opinion polls are largely irrelevant when it comes to Lib Dem seats.

There is a very high probability that the Lib Dems will form part of the next government, in a coalition. And so intellectually bankrupt is their political philosophy that they could form it happily with either of the main parties.