Blood thicker than water.

The blood that is of shared social background and common class interest, as opposed to the watery cocktail of 'centre-left progressivism':

Dave, from a long line of financiers going back to the 18th century, married to a minor aristo, Eton and Brasenose Oxford. Nick, from Russian emigre nobility, married into a Spanish patrician family, Westminster School and Robinson Cambridge. Both with no real work experience outside of being politicos - a Tory party apparatchik and a Euro-crat respectively. Both amongst some of the wealthiest MP's in parliament. If you ever doubted that there was such a thing as a ruling class - this is what it looks like in the flesh.

At local level I have never really doubted that the Lib-Dems are a kind of Tory-lite. People who by right should really be Tories but are just a little squeamish about  the consequences. A kind of NIMBY-ism writ large -  they'll campaign locally to save their local school or hospital but won't or can't join up the dots to come up with a coherent radical programme that could save everyone's school or hospital. When they get control of councils their record is invariably little better than  the Tories.

I can concede that there is/was a progressive strain of sorts in some Lib-Dems - and they must be wondering what the fuck they have done in facilitating a Tory government committed to £6billion of cuts in public spending this year, a cap on immigration and the keeping of Trident. On the other hand they may just  think that electoral reform and five cabinet seats was worth the price. And of course I don't suppose they are going to feel the coming cuts in quite the same way in Muswell Hill.