So the word should be starting to trickle out: Liberal Vision have remade their website into a blog. and seem determined to engage in debate with Lib Dems directly.

I should confess, I’ve known about this for some time – I actually built this blog for them and have been giving them advise on how to avoid falling into some Draper-eque traps.

Now I did this for a number of reasons. First, and most selfishly, I wanted an excuse to build a blog for someone else as a showcase for my ridiculously expensive boutique blog building service – if you’re in the market for that sort of thing, of course.

Second I thought that Liberal Vision would benefit from engaging with other lib dems, that hiding in the shadows just producing reports at conference time is always just going to wind people up, so that no matter what they say it falls on deaf ears. This is entirely counter-productive.

Thirdly, it’s an opportunity to get more classically liberal/libertarian stuff out into the Lib Dem blogosphere – for better or worse.  I won’t agree with everything they say or do, but I’d rather they were saying it, and, in combination with the SLF, keep the debates alive.

What I do know is that Liberal Vision is not run by Tories. It is made up exclusively by Liberal Democrat members. It’s ‘owned’ by Progressive Vision, which does have some Tories in it, but they have no control over the output of Liberal Vision. If I ever find evidence to the contrary I will reassess my position. Judge them by what they say and do – usually good advise.

I know Liberal Vision’s Director Mark Littlewood is a controversial character. I know there’s going to be people absolutely furious with me for being involved in this… but I believe, quite strongly, that opening up lines of communication and finding out what people really think is always the best way to go, that it’s liberal to debate openly, and that this attempt to engage with the blogosphere is something to be welcomed.

Of course someone’s going to point out that I unleashed a torrent of snark at Social Liberal Forum when they launched. It’s true: I did. I rushed to judgement, and I was wrong. SLF is turning out to have had a positive contribution to the Lib Dem ‘Sphere. I may be screaming hypocrite but I do learn from my mistakes.