Still proud to be a Lib Dem

So, the Lib Dems are less popular than the BNP? In Barnsley, maybe. Otherwise, can the media please get a little perspective in the aftermath of Thursday's by-election?

I still remember the days when the Lib Dems swept all before them at almsot every parliamentary by-election, but no-one ever intimated that these victories were anything more than a protest vote against the government of the day, even though the unmatched quality of the MPs voted in at those elections, such as Sarah Teather, often had just as much to do with it.

If the significance of the Barnsley by-election is that a vote for the Lib Dems is no longer a protest vote, but a vote for a party in government to be carefully considered come the next general election when it matters most, then I'm fine with that. In the meantime, being dealt the occasional kick up the backside by an electorate determined to be heard, a custom that has been endured by successive Labour and Conservative governments long before the coalition, is a small price to pay and also a testament to democratic accountability.

The bigger threat to the party's long term electoral prospects is the risk of voters across the country as a whole concluding that they are no better off with the Liberal Democrats in the coalition and of the party's members concluding that they made a mistake in joining it in the first place.

Both are wrong. Even the government's most controversial decisions have not shaken by belief in this, including tuition fees. When I first joined the Liberal Democrats, tuition fees were one of my biggest issues and a large part of the reason I signed up over nine years ago. I remain just as certain I made the right decision now as I was then.

A unilateral Conservative (or Labour for that matter) government would have consented to limitless US-style tuition fees as recommended by the higher education review led by Lord Browne, which the latter commissioned and the former supported. The politically expedient thing for the Lib Dems to have done once faced with the responsibility of setting government policy on the matter would have been to implement their pledge to not vote in favour of raising fees (they never pledged to abolish them entirely during the election campaign as is often claimed). Instead, they forced the 'Browneites' to compromise by taking full responsibility for the policy and placing a cap on tuition fees, increasing access to financial support for part-time students, and raising the threshold for repaying student debt to protect graduates on lower incomes.

Nick Clegg and Vince Cable could have sat on the sidelines their party had been restricted to for so long and pat themselves on the back for ticking off another promise kept on their manifesto, while students across the country were left to rue the consequences of their cowardice. They didn't and faced the consequences for their courage instead in the form of mass protests and the burning of effigies. I do not envy the daily dilemnas they must face, but am proud to still be a member of a party that is brave enough to confront them in the name of the national interest, rather than play duck and cover and be anihilated anyway.