Talk:Liberal Party (UK)

Liberal Democrat Info

Why does the foot of the aricle show a big box with info about the Liberal Democrats, like a list of their leaders etc? I realise they're the succesor party to the Liberals but listing info about them instead of (not even as well as) about the party the article is supposedly discussing seems weird. 217.28.5.247 (talk) 11:47, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

It has now been deleted. TFD (talk) 15:40, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

History section

As The Liberal Party no longer exists, the bulk of this article should be the history of the party. In 2008 the entire history section was removed to create History of the Liberal Party (UK) leaving behind only a section on Ideology. While there is an argument that the history is quite long and could be split off into a seperate article, the guidelines for that - WP:Summary style - do indicate that a summary should remain. I haven't got the time right now to summarise the history, so I have returned the history section to the article, as clearly without the history, this was not an article on The Liberal Party at all, but a few paragraphs on the party's idealogy.

Possible way forward: Discuss if a separate History article is required, and if consensus shows that to be appropriate, then summarise the History section per WP:Summary style and provide a link. If consensus is that a separate history article is not needed then redirect History of the Liberal Party (UK) to this article. SilkTork *^YES! 18:04, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Discussion moved from Talk:History of the Liberal Party (UK)

merge?

Do we really need separate article on the history of Liberal Party (UK)? If the party itself is officially defunct it is all history. When you have a look at that article it consist only of section Ideology which is also about history... I believe these articles should be merged. Errarel (talk) 13:09, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Having two articles for this purpose really doesn't make sense. Any objections to making the change? 212.159.69.4 (talk) 15:18, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I was about to set up a merge discussion, though I see one has already started. There appears to be no objections to a merge, so I will proceed. SilkTork *^YES! 18:07, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

No you should not merge the article without first setting up a proper discussion following WP:Merge. TFD (talk) 18:13, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

There is no reason to delete articles about defunct political parties, especially when they were notable. The LP did not change its name to the LDP - it dissolved and most of its members joined the new LDP, along with members of the former SDP. Dissidents actually re-formed the Liberal Party which continues to contest elections and has elected councillors in the UK.[1] TFD (talk) 18:25, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

See Help:Merging: "Merging is a normal editing action, something any editor can do, and as such generally does not need to be proposed and processed. If you think merging something improves the encyclopedia, you can be bold and perform the merger... Because of this, it makes little sense to object to a merger purely on procedural grounds, e.g. "you cannot do that without discussion" is not a good argument."

My intention was to set up a merge discussion, however, as the original split was done inappropriately and against guidelines, and as people had already set up a query regarding the split, and that query had been supported but not challlenged, my merger was in line with common sense, good practice, apparent consensus and relevent guidelines. I suggest above in the History section, that a discussion could be started on the splitting and development of this article. That discussion, is, I feel, quite appropriate, and potentially more helpful than raising objections to restoring this article to the state it was in before being split. SilkTork *^YES! 08:49, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I would strongly oppose this merger. Separate sections to this article can exist for ideology, its main bases of electoral support, organisational structure, listing leaders, and so on. See the treatment of former countries, such as Soviet Union, which have separate articles for history, which convey the chronology. Bastin 13:33, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Separate history articles are normally only encountered when the original article is too long to support it. Even now that the merger has been completed the resulting article is only 44kb, way below the 106kb of the Soviet Union article.

You are welcome to expand the history on this page and if it gets to an unmanageable size an article split can be considered then. Road Wizard (talk) 13:54, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

The Soviet Union article isn't the threshold, but an example of an article that has split off all of its sections. WP:SIZE demarcates 32kB as the first occasion one should consider appropriate splits. This article is currently 37kB of prose (i.e. excluding references, etc), and a discussion of a split now, rather than later, is therefore appropriate. I would make the case that the very long history section impairs the development of sections such as 'Ideology', 'Organisation', 'Political support', 'Election results', and so on, which one would find in many developed articles on extant parties. Bastin 17:06, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

SilkTork, you could merge this article with the Raving Monster Looney Party without discussion too. The point is you should not make major changes that make no sense and are likely to raise strong objections. TFD (talk) 17:20, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Ideology

Can someone expand/add to the part about the modern ideology? Here on the other side of the Atlantic we seem to have a different definition of liberalism and it would be nice to have it clarified. thanks. --MartinezMD (talk) 22:42, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

There is no modern ideology as the party is defunct. See Liberal Democrats and Liberal Party (UK, 1989) for the two successor parties. Road Wizard (talk) 13:59, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. --MartinezMD (talk) 15:38, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

History

The history of the party seems a little simplistic and misinformed in places. I've started to re-write it, taking in more recent scholarship. So far, I've only done the 'origins' section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.184.8 (talk) 19:53, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Misspelling in first paragraph

The word "separate" is misspelled, but I can't find the paragraph through editing to correct it. 184.98.114.112 (talk) 06:06, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Permanent

In the 1920s, the Labour Party permanently replaced the Liberals as the largest opponent 
of the Conservative Party in British politics, and the Liberals went into decline, which
culminated in their winning as few as 6 seats at general elections during the 1950s

Permanently is a poor choice of word here. It implies the situation could not be reversed. 82.46.109.233 (talk) 23:28, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Outline of Liberal Governments

I came to this page to try and find, essentially, a list of Liberal governments, with the dates they were in power, whether they won an election outright or in coalition, and which leader was PM. I think something like this would be quite useful to add, if anyone has the time, as currently there's a lot of scrolling through sometimes difficult to read text to find the years and PMs. Thanks 194.66.198.40 (talk) 16:12, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Liberal Party (UK)

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Liberal Party (UK)'s orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Oxford":

• From Charles Stewart Parnell: Bew in ODNB (2004–05)
• From Nonconformist: Mitchell 2011, p. 547

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 02:13, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

1909 Punch cartoon

The 1909 Punch cartoon of Lloyd George and Asquith can be seen in full here with the text "Rich Fare. The Giant Lloyd-Gorgibuster: "Fee, fi, fo, fat, I smell the blood of a plutocrat; be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread." It references Fee-fi-fo-fum and the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. Nedrutland (talk) 06:54, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Not actually Asquith.Paulturtle (talk) 00:08, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Nomination of Independent Liberal Party (UK, 1918) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Independent Liberal Party (UK, 1918) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Independent Liberal Party (UK, 1918) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Psychonaut (talk) 13:18, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Article needs going over with a fine tooth comb for falsehoods

I've recently removed two blatant falsehoods from the article, a claim that Joe Chamberlain was the leader of the Liberal Party, and a claim that the Irish Parliamentary Party (founded 1874) was founded as a consequence of the Third Reform Act (1884). There is no place for falsehoods like this in any article, let alone one about such a major force in 19th century British politics. The article needs going over very carefully to see what other nonsense has made its way in. DuncanHill (talk) 13:44, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

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Local Government

I note that little mention is made of the work of the party in local government. Ideally perhaps there ought to be a list of the local authorities the party has controlled with dates and perhaps some account of the first steps in putting forward and the election of official Liberal local councillors. This is a job for an enthusiast obviously (which I am not.) Spinney Hill (talk) 12:44, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

"Centre"

I think the Liberal Party political position should be written "Centre to Centre-left" or "Centre-left (Historical) / Centre (Modern)" Until Labour grew into a major party, the Liberal Party was perceived as the left-wing against the right-wing Conservative Party.Storm598 (talk) 23:14, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

And both the former Whigs and the latter Lib Dems are said to be "Centre to Centre-left". Storm598 (talk) 23:17, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

References

Position

I believe the party was too big, and historically influential to not be worthy of a political position, however we have two obvious factions, as sourced, classical liberals, and social/new liberals, we have deviated between labeling them "Centre-left to centre-right" and simply just centrist/"Centrism", either is better than nothing in my opinion, but this party should be granted a position due to its historical importance. Thoughts? B. M. L. Peters (talk) 02:54, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Oppose - Classical liberalism is center-right by modern standards, and it is ridiculous to regard all classical liberalism (except radicalism) in the 19th century as center-right. If the Liberal Party article should be described as "center-right to center-left," the political position of the Whigs and Radicals article should also be changed. I don't think we should describe the political position of this party. (I don't know American politics, but I know European politics to some extent because I read a lot of related books.)--Storm598 (talk) 04:55, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

As you can see from just reading articles about political parties on the French side right now, classical liberals in the 19th century were often centre-left. On the other hand, radicalists were left-wing and even far-left. The Liberal Party is also a political party in the 19th century, and we cannot agree to write down the political position of this party as of the 21st century. The radicalists are today's social liberals, and there were far leftists among the radicalists, but they are never far-left by today's standards. In the first place, there is no obligation to describe the political position in the infobox.--Storm598 (talk) 05:13, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Of course, British politics has a somewhat unique aspect. Gladston, a member of the Liberal Party, supported the Laissez-faire economic policy, which later influenced the right-wing Thatcherists in the Conservative Party. On the other hand, Disraeli was relatively pro-labor and welfare-friendly than Gladston. However, Gladston cannot be seen as more right than Disraeli. At least in terms of the times when they were prime ministers.--Storm598 (talk) 05:22, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Oppose - it was a party with a long history, and that changed its ideology over time. "Centre" would describe the political position of the Liberal Party between the rise of the Labour Party as the main opposition to the Conservative Party and the Liberals' eventual merger into the LibDems, but that's only part of the parties' history. I would preferably leave the position section blank, in all honesty, and would certainly not list anything that wasn't properly referenced using scholarly sources.--Autospark (talk) 17:12, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Oppose any attempt to distil a long and complex history into an anachronistic modern synthesis. Historically the Liberals were on the left, the Tories the right. With the rise of Labour one could use an axis that puts Liberals somewhere in the centre, but one could easily come up with axes that present the positions differently. There are more than two political dimensions at play here, in addition to the temporal. I appreciate that many people are reluctant to think in anything other than binary terms, but we really shouldn't pander to them. DuncanHill (talk) 22:55, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Political position

I'll make a better proposal than B. M. L. Peters. Mark the political position of the Liberal Party. However, it should never be marked "Centre". LP's political position should be marked as "Centre to Centre-left".--Storm598 (talk) 00:48, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Classical liberalism is often relatively centre-right in modern standards, but in the 19th century, it was rather a left ideology. LP has never been located on the "centre-right" side of British politics, in any case, like the Conservative Party.--Storm598 (talk) 00:50, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Whigs, the predecessor of the Liberal Party, is also a centre to centre-left party, and the current Lib Dems is also a centre to centre-left party. And the Liberal Party is ideologically similar to the centre to centre-left German Democratic Party. --Storm598 (talk) 00:55, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

The topic of the Talk that B. M. L. Peters did was just a discussion of making LP's political position "Centre," not a debate about political position itself.--Storm598 (talk) 00:53, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

"Liberal Focus Team" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Liberal Focus Team has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 March 18 § Liberal Focus Team until a consensus is reached. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 05:13, 18 March 2024 (UTC)