Let’s stop forgetting the Lib Dems exist During the first 40 years of the 17th century, high society in the Dutch Republic was gripped by an obsession […]

During the first 40 years of the 17th century, high society in the Dutch Republic was gripped by an obsession with an exotic plant from the colonies: the tulip. The cost of the flower grew at such a rate that at the height of the boom, it was cheaper to buy an oil painting of a tulip than it was to buy a real one. Then, in 1637, it emerged that they grew just as freely in Dutch soil as they did abroad: and the value of a tulip collapsed.

In the last two years, the British political class has been gripped by a similar mania for setting up new political parties of the pro-European centre. Chris Coghlan and James Torrance, who stood as independent anti-Brexit candidates in the general election, have founded a new party called Renew. Shortly before the election, Jolyon Maugham, a barrister and former adviser to Ed Miliband, unveiled plans for a new party of the radical centre with the unlikely name of Spring.

This week, Jeremy Cliffe, head of the Economist’s Berlin bureau, launched yet another on Twitter, a party he dubbed “the Radicals” and promptly quit.

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Taking @RadicalsUK forward from here not compatible with my job as Berlin Bureau Chief, so I'm handing over control: https://t.co/MuE5VcD4p6 — Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) October 18, 2017

You can see the appeal: there is a large gap between Labour on the left, the Conservative on the right, while as far as the crucial question of the European Union there is nothing to choose between the two at all.

In the UK, people who want to vote for a party that is more compassionate than the Conservatives, more economically liberal than Labour and more pro-European than both of them have one option available already: the Liberal Democrats. People in Scotland have a choice of two: the Lib Dems or the SNP, who are to the right of Labour economically but are more progressive than the Tories.

It’s true that the Lib Dems had a bad defeat in 2015 and another this year. Yes, they went from eight seats to 12, but there are 39 seats in which the party finished second and nine which they are within shouting distance of the victorious party. They have many more members thanks to their pro-European stance, but they still have far fewer councillors than they did when they entered the coalition in 2010.

Yes, there are considerable difficulties, but they also have huge advantages: as with all established parties they own enough assets to keep them from the financial abyss, and their constitution is designed in a way that means that anyone who wants to remake the party in their own image ought to be able to if they are sufficiently persuasive.

Another easier path to change the trajectory of the big political parties, one advanced by Nick Clegg in his book How to Stop Brexit, is for Remainers to join them. The Conservatives in particular look vulnerable: they have just 100,000 members and could easily be overwhelmed by a pro-European influx.

Neither route might work but they are considerably more plausible than yet another upper-middle-class bloke setting up a political party. My suspicion, which may be unfair, is that the real reason why people keep doing this is that they look at the prospects for internal change in the big two and think it is all too difficult. So they set up a new party, not to fix the problem but as a rather public form of therapy.

Stephen Bush is special correspondent at the ‘New Statesman’; @stephenkb