With Labour floundering on the rocks to sustain the nautical metaphor and the Conservatives still too tained with sleaze and incompetence to completely win over the voters the Liberal Democrats should be sailing a broad reach towards their goal of becoming a serious challenger for government.
But somehow the Liberal Democrats always display an uncanny knack for statching defeat from the jaws of victory.
For some reason they do well when the conservatives have been in power a while but when a Labour government is approaching its end days the Liberal Democrats cannot persuade disillusioned Labout votes from going all the way across the political divide and voting Tory.
In Sailing Into The West The Daily Stirrer suggests how the party might avoid being dispatched back to Devon and Cornwall as an irrelevant rump.