Out of order III...

"How liberal are our MPs?" Stephen Tall, a co-editor of Liberal Democrat Voice (a/the leading independent website for Lib Dems) writing about a new part of the website in today's Guardian, and the ranking of MPs' anti-authoritarian credentials. They "identified 10 key votes from the 2005-10 Parliament" and from that info ranked all MPs according to how liberal/authoritarian their record was: marked out of 100 the higher the score means they are more authoritarian and vice versa (i.e. zero is super Liberal)

It is quite a surprise....but then again not really, when you think how New Labour work...I'm sure most of those 341 Labour MP's that come in the 343 highest spots (before we reach the first Conservative!) would have voted another way had they been allowed to. This is odd...and interesting although with some flaws: presumably if they missed the vote they become more liberal (i.e. new Conservative Chloe Smith on zero) and, after all, it's really hard to believe Nick Clegg is less liberal than John Redwood. :-)