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Independent Liberal is a description which candidates and politicians have used to describe themselves, designating them asliberals, yetindependent of the official Liberal Party of their country. To avoid confusion with theLiberal Party of Canada, theLiberal Party of the United Kingdom, and theNew Zealand Liberal Party, the description can no longer be used for election purposes, but is still available in Australia.
In Australia, an Independent Liberal is a member of theLiberal Party of Australia (the majorcentre-right,liberal conservative party in Australia) who is either running in an election as an independent or who sits in a legislature as an independent.
Independent Liberal Members of Parliament (or of the Canadian Senate or a provincial legislative assembly) are typically former Liberalcaucus members who were either expelled from the Liberal Party caucus orresigned the whip due to a political disagreement. More recent examples, includeDon Johnston who sat as an Independent Liberal from January 18, 1988 until the adjournment of parliament due to his resignation from the Liberal caucus as a result of his support of theCanada–United States Free Trade Agreement which the party opposed,Jag Bhaduria who sat as an Independent Liberal from 1994 to 1996 following his expulsion from the Liberal caucus andDennis Mills who briefly left the Liberal caucus in 1996 to sit as an "Independent Liberal" to protest the Liberal government's failure to abolish theGoods and Services Tax (GST).
Independent Liberal candidates for parliament or the legislature have been those who generally subscribe to Liberal Party principles but either have not been selected as an official Liberal Party candidate or decline to seek the party's nomination due to a disagreement with the party on certain issues. Under the currentElections Act a candidate who is not affiliated with a political party can only describe themselves on the ballot as Independent or "No Affiliation" and cannot describe themselves in terms of an existing political party. Accordingly, no candidate for theHouse of Commons of Canada has officially designated themselves an "Independent Liberal" since the1968 federal election and no Independent Liberal candidate has been elected to the House of Commons since the1957 federal election.
A number of Quebec Liberal MPs left the party and sat as Independent Liberals as a result of theConscription Crisis of 1944 as they opposed the Liberal government's decision to implement conscription. The most prominent of these wasCharles Gavan Power who resigned from Cabinet over the issue. Several ran for re-election in the1945 federal election as Independent Liberals.William Lyon Mackenzie King's government was returned with only a minority of Liberal MPs in parliament but was able to govern as amajority government with the support of Independent Liberal MPs, most of whom rejoined the party in the course of the parliament.
Independent Liberal was a definition in New Zealand politics in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries for Independents that aligned themselves with theNew Zealand Liberal Party. It is often difficult to determine whether candidates were official Liberal or Independent Liberal and many electorates had more Liberal candidates standing than seats available. From1893 to1908 the New Zealand Liberal Party was the only formalised political party to win any seats in parliament.
In thePhilippines, independent Liberal, or denoted as "Liberal (independent)" on candidate lists, refers to politicians who had aligned themselves with theLiberal Party, but did not win its nomination or ran under its label. A candidate using this designation won 1 seat in the1965 House elections. This was used during theThird Philippine Republic, which had atwo-party system. In the currentFifth Republic and under themulti-party system, candidates are no longer identified by this manner.
Independent Liberal is a description once used inBritish politics to denote a form of non-party affiliation. It was used to designate a politician as aliberal who wasindependent of any political party, particularly of theLiberal Party before its transformation in the 1980s into theLiberal Democrats.
Since theRegistration of Political Parties Act 1998 came into force, a candidate for election can no longer be described as an "Independent Liberal" on a ballot paper, as the 1998 Act prohibits any description which could cause confusion with a registered political party. In practice, the description used is either the name of a registered party or the word "Independent".