Triumph for non-party-political liberals

I am not party political. I cannot be, in my work as one of the Guardian's few journalists based in the UK outside London. But I used to be, and I would be inhuman not to raise a glass at the sight of Liberal cabinet ministers and Liberal policies in the Queen's speech. I spent my first 37 years campaigning for my father Richard , the Liberal who besieged, won, lost, recaptured and held until retirement the northern, largely industrial seat of Colne Valley . It really was from the first 37 years; candidates' babies were a powerful weapon in the 1950s, and we were allowed to use the loudspeaker car from the age of two, when driving past fields empty of everything except sheep. Filial loyalty then: how sweet, but so what? So, what I am celebrating today is two wider virtues learned from this experience: perseverance and a clear-eyed experience of what the other political parties were really like. The first is simple. There are few better lessons for life than experience of the long haul. As Methodists, we were raised in a world of pilgrim bands marching through the darkness and ships – torn sails, provisions short – making stout-heartedly for port. The age I am, there was also a dash of Kipling, encouraged by my father, for all that he was a conscientious objector and member of the Friends' Ambulance Unit during the second world war. "Follow on, for we are waiting by the trails that we lost…" If we did not make the sunlit uplands, our comrades or our children would. Is cuddling with Cameron a sunlit upland? Here beginneth the second lesson. I have had the visceral feelings of those who write today that they "hate Tories". But I learned enough at school about Oastler, Disraeli and radical Joe Chamberlain to realise that Tories couldn't all be selfish monsters. Since dropping my tribal allegiance for work, I have met hundreds who have the best motives. Short on rhetoric, long on doing practical good. On the other side, there have been equally many saintly socialists and Labour supporters; but plenty of others who were nothing of the sort. In particular there was a northern type whose scorn for Liberals, and refusal to recognise that we were every bit as principled as they were (and much more radical), was matched only by their deep conservatism. Progressives? They knew the first two lines of The Red Flag , and that was it. Battles past. But there is a less nostalgic reason for celebrating: the prospect that our warped voting system will finally be reformed, in turn changing British politics for good. My father was popular, but never for a moment believed that he could have some mystical, single-member constituency relationship with Colne Valley's 60,000 electors: the argument so often dragged out for retaining the simple X. As for strong government through first-past-the-post? Come on. Study the record of opportunism and dither back to 1945 when we voted out the strongest we have ever elected. That was Britain's last official coalition, and the last time we had Liberals at the cabinet table, although their influence – and perseverance – continued through such as Lord Beveridge: the Liberal behind the greatest of modern welfare reforms.