Britain's Liberal Democrats are meeting in Harrogate this week to debate an existential problem: is their future best secured by continuing close engagement with the Labour Party or should they be preparing to fight the next election on a more independent platform? The new party leader, Mr Charles Kennedy, has had to play this one down the middle, at the risk of sending contradictory signals to activists and supporters.
Although he struck a more independent note in his campaign he made it clear after being elected that his preference is to maintain the relatively close relations built up by his predecessor, Mr Paddy Ashdown, with Mr Blair. They have been based on a joint committee on electoral reform and a long-term - if rarely fully articulated - prospect of a merger. Among activists of both parties such a prospect is unpopular, mainly because it is assumed it would deprive them of their distinctive political identity. There is a fear of losing seats and a willingness to emphasise alternative approaches to taxation, health and education issues.
Among party voters a different picture emerges. According to an opinion poll in the Guardian this week Liberal Democrat and Labour voters strongly endorse the current constructive engagement. Voters also see the Liberal Democrats as having been repositioned closer to Labour under Mr Ashdown's leadership. Intriguingly, a merger would hold on to most of its support, according to this poll, producing a party capable of commanding 58 per cent support among the electorate. That would keep the Conservatives out of office for a long time to come.
Debates this week have fully aired these alternative scenarios. Part of the problem is that for all the enthusiasm of Mr Blair and his close advisers for long term co-operation, even for a merger, they do not command sufficient support within Labour as a whole to push such a programme through. Nor are his advisers all enamoured of the policy which would copper-fasten relations with the Liberal Democrats - the introduction of proportional representation in parliamentary elections. The report on the subject from Lord Jenkins advocated a system falling short of Liberal Democrat aspirations but improving the notorious disproportionality of the first-past-the-post system.
But Mr Blair is reported to be disenchanted with proportional representation following its introduction in Scotland and Wales for the devolved assemblies and reluctant to contemplate the coalitions he believes hampered freedom of movement by other European governments to determine policy during the Kosovo war. Most Labour MPs and a majority of cabinet members are opposed to the political sacrifices involved. Mr Kennedy yesterday distanced himself from critical remarks made by his main opponent in the leadership campaign, Mr Simon Hughes. They echoed some of the points made by Liberal Democrat activists at the party conference, who want to be able to argue vigorously against both Labour and the Conservatives at the next elections. Mr Kennedy will have his opportunity to clarify his strategy when he addresses the conference tomorrow . It is a tricky assignment, but he does, after all, enjoy the confidence of the majority of party members who recently voted him into office.