Political parties need distinctive policies. The Lib Dems had them in the 2005 election, with their own policy in foreign affairs (opposing military intervention in Iraq) and their own policy at home (supporting modest tax increases to pay for public services, something Labour had run away from ever since it lost the 1992 election).

Five years later, the Lib Dems went into Coalition government. That wasn’t a mistake in itself, but Nick Clegg did not insist upon one of the three ‘great posts’ – Chancellor, Home Office or Foreign Office. Compare the moment when Germany’s Greens went into coalition with the Social Democrats. Joschka Fischer became the Foreign Minister and had a clear impact on German foreign policy. As Deputy Prime Minister, Clegg may have had the effect of modifying government policy and making it less ‘excessive’ – like other deputies before him (Whitelaw? Prescott?) - but having a general watering-down effect on government policy does not mean giving it a distinctive flavour. Fischer was able to make a policy area his own (up to a point) and the Greens didn’t suffer too much electorally as a consequence. Clegg, despite some achievements, was not associated with a specifically Liberal vision and was punished heavily in 2015.

Since then, the Lib Dems have found it difficult to find a distinctive policy. When it comes to environmental policies, they risk being seen as Green-lite, when it comes to caring and welfare they are in danger of seeming Labour-lite and their distinctive stance on the EU has been at least partly overtaken by events. So where can their distinctive contribution come from?

Start from Liberal strengths. They lie at the local level. Lib Dems have always supported local issues and remain well represented in local government. This is not parochialism – people care about these things. But a really effective local politics links up with national issues. People may think it is just a question of campaigning to keep a bus service running or a post office open. They forget that local concerns have to be integrated into national strategies.

Take the UK picture as a whole. Many in Scotland think it can only manage its affairs effectively through independence. One way to counter this is to make sure that English regions, alongside Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, can maintain their distinctive identity through the institutions of the British Union. Regions and nations should be represented in a second chamber at Westminster purged of peers, just as the German regions are represented in its second chamber, the Bundesrat. People may not want ‘yet more tiers of government’, but they will support better use of those that exist already.

I lived a lot of my life in Devon and Cornwall. Traditionally, the Liberals had many MPs there, not least because they were associated with giving the Westcountry a distinctive voice. That perspective has gone. It can be won back by campaigning to structure things nationally so that local interests are at the heart of government. That might help the Lib Dems to recover their distinctive voice, not only in the Westcountry but in all parts of the country.