Renamed simply “Liberal Party”

It seems Nick Clegg’s claims to be “a liberal” (and not “a liberal democrat”) were deliberate. I’ve just come back from a drink with a friend in the Electoral Commission. She works in the section that deals with party registration and they were contacted by the Lib Dems last week to see how the party goes about changing their name. She reckons they’re going to do it after the elections in May (my thoughts: well, it would almost certainly have to be September at the earliest, as Conference would need to approve the name change), but they haven’t been told what to.

So, I called someone I know in Cowley Street, and yes, it turns out that soon after Clegg became leader in December the party started talking to the Liberal Party (the rump from the old party who opposed the SDP / Liberal merger) about merging (or re-merging?) the parties to become simply the “Liberal Party”. The rump Liberals seem to be happy with it and the plan is to hold a joint press conference with them “sometime in the summer” to launch the new name (he mentioned the party will do some internal polling / shoulder-tapping to gauge how popular the move will be).

A couple of questions then, presuming Clegg does bite the bullet and try to push this through:

• Will the old Social Democrats (including Charles Kennedy) in the party accept the change?

• Is it worth the hassle? Is it now arguable that “Liberal Democrats” is a stronger brand than “Liberals”?

• Will Gordon Brown switch to calling us the “Liberal Democrats” if we do change our name?

I’m going to see if I can find out more and should be able to update later today.