plays in Bermuda's politics. Given the statements by the party's spokesman, Graeme Outerbridge, printed in this newspaper yesterday, it is time for the NLP to tell the public just how many members it has and where it thinks it is going.

It seems to us that there is room in Bermuda for a strong alternative to the views held by the two major political parties. A voice which could keep both parties on a straight and narrow path could be very productive but the NLP continues to demonstrate that it is not that voice. Its approach is scatter shot, aimed at random without any apparent cohesion. It now seems that the NLP is unable to find any real place in Bermudian politics and has decided simply to go where the other parties do not go, no matter what. The NLP seems to have no understanding of public thinking.

We have come to doubt that the leaders of the party are together in their thinking on many of the issues because we know that the leader, Charles Jeffers, is a sensible man. The NLP may now be just a collection of individuals who are unable to find any other resting place and are never again going to receive any significant public support.

Take Independence as an example. Despite the referendum, which would have gone against Independence even if the PLP had urged its supporters to vote, Mr.

Outerbridge wants Independence now. Mr. Outerbridge says that it is unlikely that Independence will even be in the PLP's 1998 election platform. Mr.

Outerbridge overlooks the fact that both major parties have learned that Independence is poison at the polls, that and income tax which the NLP also seems to support.

It may be that the NLP now wants to attract those people who are strongly in favour of Independence. That is political naivety because, like it or not, the hard core Independence vote largely goes to the Progressive Labour Party, whether it's in their platform or not.

Would Mr. Outerbridge willingly deprive Bermudians, especially young Bermudians, of the opportunity to travel freely to the United Kingdom for education and training? It seems so. He has torn into the British government just at the time when Britain is being conciliatory and when Bermuda stands to move ahead and increase its advantages. He may be correct when he says that Britain should have acted earlier but the political reality is that nothing was going to happen until Hong Kong returned to China. But the time has come and the NLP seems bent on throwing away Bermuda's advantages.

The problem is that the NLP has been struggling in the wilderness for a very long time and now seems to have lost touch with today's realities. It gathers only a token vote in by-elections and will probably be unable to field a significant number of candidates for the coming elections. The truth is that the NLP is through, a spent force if it ever was a force, and should quietly fade away.