The state of party politics in this country is a cause of great concern.

The Conservative Party desperately flounders in its futile preoccupation to find relevant and ground-breaking policies to present to the electorate.

Take, for instance, its scouring of Europe for new ways to fund the NHS. What effrontery.

It's basically anti-European in anything more than a limited economic sense but now pretends to admit we have much to learn from our Continental neighbours.

The Labour Party must reform its way of operating or it will end up, through Blairism, in the same state the Conservatives now find themselves after Thatcherism.

It's up to the majority of the party's MPs to use their muscle and defy the whips if they think it in the best interests of the country.

The Liberal Democratic Party - of which I have been a member since 1964 (when, of course, it was known as the Liberal Party) - is increasingly becoming too much part of the Establishment.

True, it's still the best party, but social democracy is not liberalism. As a party gets more successful, it inevitably attracts people who seek power, overriding their principles.

In Sussex, there is even one Liberal Democrat councillor - some miles from Brighton and Hove - who admits he is a racist.

Another has a hang-and-flog-them mentality. These viewpoints were anathema to Liberals but not, it seems, to some Liberal Democrats in positions of influence.

-Malcolm Martindale, Swanborough Drive, Brighton