Leading Article:Why Paddy Ashdown must stay in the game

What is Paddy Ashdown for? We suspect that there are many in his own party, probably including himself, who have asked this question recently. It is an important question in an election year, and we ask it in a broadly sympathetic light.

All three of our main parties are now incoherent ideologically. The Liberal Democrats began as an alliance of Liberalism and social democracy and have been shaped opportunistically in local government and at Westminster against the background of what might be called The Strange Death of Conservative England. These long-drawn-out throes have seen the contradictions of Thatcherism played out in the unforgiving debate about our European destiny. Meanwhile, new Labour, the main beneficiary of the Tory decline, appears much of the time to have sublimated traditional principles into a ruthless electoralism. It lays claim not only to the social democratic tradition, but to Liberalism and One Nation Toryism too.

This may seem a rather high falutin' way of setting the scene for Mr Ashdown's engagement with David Frost's sofa yesterday. But it is Mr Ashdown's claim that he is above grubbing for votes, that he will stake out the ground of high principle and dare people to rally to it. In endlessly reiterating his purity, decency, honesty and transparency he can sound irritatingly pious, but we should not let the holier-than-thouism get in the way of the real issue.

So what are these high principles? The one that matters is liberalism, a big word with many meanings and a whole baggage-train of history behind it. But there are three meanings which we think matter, and which we think start to define Mr Ashdown's useful role.

First, there is liberalism as a defence of individual freedom. For much of the decade of this newspaper's existence, we have taken the value of personal liberty for granted. It seemed that if we were not at the end of history we were at least at the end of that particular argument, so far as developed Western economies are concerned. But the drift to authoritarianism needs to be watched with hawk-like attention, as much on the left as on the right, when there is so much social consensus about: it is reassuring, indeed essential, that we should have a serious political party for which individual liberty is a core value.

Then there is liberalism's concern with political freedoms and the making of our system of government more democratic. Again, our concerns and those of the Liberal Democrats coincide. Mr Ashdown's party is the most convincingly committed to the cause of bringing what he calls our "rotten, stinking political system" into line with the modern age. Again, we need the Liberal Democrats to keep Labour honest. The talks between the two parties mean dramatic changes to our constitution are more likely to happen, and are more likely to be soundly based. The end of law-making hereditary peers, the setting up of a Scottish parliament and human rights made enforceable in British courts would transform our political life.

But the question of how we elect our MPs still demands more clarity from Labour. The present system is crude and unfair, as Mr Blair himself concedes. This will become more obvious if the rest of our museum-piece constitution starts to be modernised. Mr Ashdown yesterday teased Mr Blair over his promise to hold a referendum on electoral reform while remaining personally opposed to proportional representation. "I think it is a pretty curious position for somebody to introduce a referendum and invite people to vote against it, but Tony Blair must articulate his own position," he said. We hope that the pressure from Mr Ashdown will help the Labour leader to do so.

Then there is liberalism as a justification for activist government. Last week Mr Ashdown cited the Liberal government of 1906-14 which "recognised that individual liberty depended, not just on the hard-won political freedoms of the 19th century, but on positive protections against ill-health, unemployment and the deprivations of old age". The New Liberals at the other end of this century realised that these things had to be paid for. So Mr Ashdown was right yesterday to mock Gordon Brown for his "depressing timidity" in failing to ask people earning more than pounds 100,000 a year to pay more in tax. He is right also to chide the Labour leader for declaring that education would be the "passion" of his government without saying where the money will come from.

Mr Ashdown's demand for honesty in taxation may be a slogan, he may be shifty about his own plans for a penny on income tax "if necessary", and it may be that he is unlikely to have any direct responsibility for the nation's finances. But our political debate would be poorer and less honest without this pressure from a party with its own democratic mandate.

It is intriguing that neither Mr Blair nor Mr Ashdown's spin doctors deny that the two have discussed jobs in a possible Labour government - although we suspect that Mr Ashdown and Menzies Campbell have only been offered them on condition that they join the Labour Party. It would be a mistake for Mr Ashdown to accept this kind of offer, because he may yet wield more power as leader of an independent party - even with a majority Labour government, and even before electoral reform. In a time of ideological elision, when right steals from left and left from right, and all parties chase polls as much as principle, the ancient values of liberalism continue to goad the dominant parties out of a complacency into which they might all too easily slide. Mr Ashdown's present game, of prodding Mr Blair and provoking Mr Major, is not only best for his party - it is also best for our political system.