Posts of the week: Liberal Democrat challenges and prospects

Welcome to my weekly round-up of two blogging highlights from the past week: the post that I found most interesting or enjoyable to write and the post from someone else that I found most interesting or entertaining.

A post from me…

The Liberal Democrat challenges for 2011: defining and explaining economic fairness

For Nick Clegg, “social mobility” has been the phrase of choice in recent months. It certainly is a phrase that many in policy making and government circles use but, rather like “street furniture”, despite being popular in such circles it is almost never used by people outside such circles. That in itself should be a strong warning against using it as a regular public description of what the party is about.

Read the full post here.

… and a post from someone else

End of year round-up – the Lib Dems

My selection this time is a piece of as usual excellent analysis from Anthony Wells – and I’d say that even if it were not for the last paragraph…! Here’s a sample from earlier in his post:

Is there a point when the Liberal Democrat position in the polls gets so bad they withdraw from the coalition (or the party splits?) – I don’t know, I don’t pretend to have any great insight into the views of Liberal Democrat MPs or activists. My guess is that the chances are greatly overestimated by people who would like it to collapse (the truth is I think we all overestimate the chances of exciting and interesting things happening!). Being outside the coalition wouldn’t necessarily help the Liberal Democrats much in the polls (it would give them the independence to promote their own policies, but the damage to their image has already been done) and the last thing the Liberal Democrats would want to risk in their present situation is an early election. I expect, like the Conservatives, Nick Clegg’s strategy is dependent upon seeing the job through until the economy has recovered and then pointing to what the Lib Dems have achieved and contributed to that.

Read the full post from Anthony here.

Spotted any other great posts this week that I may have missed? Let me know in the comments.