Should Liberal Democrats reintroduce a narration of liberalism?

Yes. And never a better time to do this.

While the Liberal Democrat leadership are committed to serving in a coalition government with the Conservatives, there is a real danger that their principles will be absorbed amoeba-like and lost in the compromises of Thatcher-reformed Civil Service orthodoxy. One day soon, they must fight elections against the Conservatives (starting with next year's electoral reform referendum), and must be intellectually fit and ready for the fray.

Simon Hughes was first elected to Parliament in a by-election in 1983 as a Liberal, not as a Social Democrat. He fought quite a feisty campaign against Labour, who had formerly regarded Bermondsey as a safe seat. He's as good as anyone currently senior in the Liberal Democrats to put that crucial distance between principles and policies the party would do, were they not having to compromise with the Tories.

At that time in the mid-1980s, I was an active member of the SDP (having defected, not from Labour, but from the Ecology Party (now the Green Party)). I was perfectly content to campaign for Liberals, often travelling to help with by-elections, subscribed to Liberal News, and was also SDP Area Chairman in one of the three places where there were Liberals standing against Social Democrats during key elections. I could not save Aldershot, but my efforts at damage limitation did manage to allow Alliance control of Hampshire, Hart and Waverley councils, all of which within the circulation of local papers serving Aldershot.

One of my early successes was the Portsmouth South by-election in 1984, where a popular ex-Labour Social Democrat took on a "safe" Tory seat and his old Labour colleagues on the Council through a sheer love of his city. Mike Hancock is still its MP now, and would be excellent alongside Simon Hughes in this narration of liberalism.

My main role was to open up to Democracy no-go areas (or safe seats) and never again to hear the words from a Prime Minister "there is no alternative".

I would welcome a narration of Liberalism, and the first thing to be re-stated is its opposition to conformity. Yes, it makes coherent Government difficult, but solutions need to be found where people can be honourable and true to themselves, yet still be able to run a country.

There should be debates up and down the country, the quality of which cannot be matched by the other ideologies on offer, or worse still this dead-hand of celebrity worship and mob rule imposed on us through the Civil Service by the tabloids and their global business interests.

The whole point of Liberalism is that control and prosperity should be spread downwards as far as it will go. Individuals, families, villages, communities - if they can claim and grasp the wealth and each make good use of it, far better that than handed upwards to some uncontrollable self-serving machine, be it private or state.

As much a part of Liberalism as the left leg needs the right leg, is that with every Freedom and Right comes an equal Responsibility. If we are to claim control over our destiny, then we have a corresponding responsibility to do so wisely, and with careful regard for the balances that make our lives bearable with others, both locally and globally. If we lack the resources to do this, then a duty of any Liberal Government is to provide them, and enable us all to bear the burden of State, rather than leave it to tyrants or the criminally greedy.

Why aren't Conservatives "pure" conservative?

Why isn't anybody pure anything?

Because politics is about compromise, and getting parties to agree on things they're never going to agree on.

Liberals are defined, they don't have a clue where they stand, and that is their problem. So yes, they need a new Definition.