For too long the easy cry of a penny on income tax has allowed them to remain in the lazy embrace of public-sector vested interests. Its education policy might as well be written by the National Union of Teachers, and its health policy by the BMA.It is strange that a party with such a strong base in local politics, and that inherits the proud traditions of British liberalism, should find itself endorsing the centralised state monopoly model of public services. Yet the party has proved its worth as a stalwart defender of liberal values and civil liberties in debates on drugs, crime and refugees.It is not ridiculous to suppose that the Lib Dems could replace the Tory party as Labour’s main opposition. The longer the Tories languish amid the ruins of their once-great party, and the more Labour finds its statist approach to public services too slow and too insensitive to individual needs to satisfy the expectations it has raised, the more plausible such a change becomes.Mr Kennedy has bravely resisted the authoritarian populism of the other two parties. But now he needs to move his party on from its recent past and embrace a genuinely liberal, decentralised and consumer-led policy on public services – and seize the opportunity which history has presented..

The hopes raised last year that the horror of 11 September might “shake the kaleidoscope”, in Tony Blair’s phrase, and enable the Israelis and Palestinians to rethink their positions have now been comprehensively dashed. This last week has seen the bloodiest violence on both sides since the present Palestinian uprising began. And in the attitudes of the international community, principally that of the United States, not enough has changed to force the parties towards negotiation. The only hope that can come out of such despair is that the level of violence has reached such a pitch that the persuadable hardliners on both sides will now see that their aggressive stances will lead them nowhere.It remains the case, however, that a settlement can only come if the US exerts its power. There are signs that the Bush administration is moving, however incrementally, in the right direction.

This week Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, became more explicit in his criticism of Mr Sharon, saying: “If you declare war on the Palestinians and think you can solve the problem by seeing how many Palestinians can be killed – I don’t know that leads us anywhere.”That was the first time that the US administration took issue with the Israeli Prime Minister’s adoption of the rhetoric of the “war against terrorism”.Mr Powell asked Mr Sharon to “take a hard look” at his policies to see whether they will work. As the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz commented, this is to make the mistake of assuming that the Israeli prime minister has a policy. Nevertheless, any Israeli government understands the importance of US support, and the pressure towards negotiation is building, however slowly. Anthony Zinni, the US envoy, is back in Israel next week, with a Saudi peace proposal that is unclear in many of its details but that, at least, provides something to talk about.The outlook in the Middle East is bleaker this weekend than at any time in the past two years. Every hopeful sign in recent weeks – the increasing activism of United States policy, the signs of restiveness in the Israeli armed forces and the shift in Arab attitudes signified by the Saudi plan – has been overshadowed by news of suicide bombers and helicopter gunship attacks on Palestinian targets It may yet have to get worse before it can get better.. When the Metropolitan Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, expressed his frustration with the effectiveness of justice, he was speaking for all police officers. The bottom line is that justice is not being done, thanks to the arcane rules and bureaucracy of our criminal trial process.

The public knows this, the legal profession knows this and the Government know this. The long-term effect has been a downward spiral in public confidence, to the extent that less than half the public believe the criminal justice system is effective in bringing offenders to justice and only 26 per cent believe it meets the needs of victims.The criminal trial process is in desperate need of reform. This is shown in the Government’s document The Way Ahead, which proposes to overhaul the archaic system that has been muddled together over the centuries and whose rituals and methods satisfy no one. Lord Justice Auld’s Criminal Courts Review, published last year, made a number of good recommendations which could resolve many of the issues, but the recommendations do not go far enough. Even criminals suffer, because the system fails to make them face up to the consequences of their actions and may even encourage a higher level of criminality.Despite many attempts over the last 30 years, including three Royal Commissions, there has been no success in changing the culture of the courtroom from a melodramatic procedural game. This is in part due to every development being focused on giving the advantage to the defendant.