Leading Article: Lib Dems need a change of clothes

HISTORIANS may find a sad irony in the timing of the Liberal Democrats' resurgence. They may judge that a breakthrough in popular support for the party in reality disguised serious decay. Success in the South-west of England may prove to have been no more than another false dawn. The real sign of these times may emerge to be the last-minute defection to Labour of the Liberal Democrat candidate for Newham North East.

That parliamentary seat was once held by Reg Prentice, a former Labour minister. His defection to the Tories in 1977 foreshadowed more numerous and important departures to the SDP by those frustrated with the leftward drift of the Labour Party. Alec Kellaway's decision on Wednesday to desert the Liberal Democrats may signal the beginnings of the opposite phenomenon. Labour policy is now so difficult to distinguish from Liberal Democrat views that Mr Kellaway threw his lot in with what he called the 'main social democratic party'.

His action was, like Mr Prentice's, more than just the bizarre behaviour of a maverick. It dramatised a dilemma that many Liberal Democrat supporters feel, particularly those who came from the SDP. They abandoned Labour in 1981, convinced that a once broad church had turned into a left-wing sect. Yet most of the arguments prompting that separation - over internal party democracy, unilateralism, Europe and the creation of a mixed economy - have now been settled in favour of the SDP rebels in spite of their absence. With the ascendancy of Tony Blair, the Liberal Democrats will find it increasingly difficult to offer reasons why their carefully nurtured supporters should not instead choose the red rose.

The Liberal Democrats must act quickly to avoid such a threat. Once already this century they have suffered political destruction at the hands of the Labour Party. Although blessed with the brains of Keynes and Beveridge, the Liberals failed after 1918 to win backing from millions of newly enfranchised working-class voters. Now they face the possibility of surrendering gains in middle England to a Labour Party that seems, after Neil Kinnock and John Smith, poised to reawaken its sympathy for Britain's southern reaches.

The continuing success of the Liberal Democrats depends on their creating a distinctive message that appeals more than Mr Blair to these voters. They should look for ideas to the party of William Gladstone. His radical philosophy combined social and economic liberalism with constitutional reform. The Liberal Party represented belief in low taxation, free markets and reducing the role of the state. It also stood for individual freedom. This distinguished the party from the Tories, who have never been able to overcome a desire to order people about.

Gladstone's principles offer inspiration for a new, clear Liberalism that would surely appeal to many British people, regardless of Labour efforts to turn British politics into a two-horse race.