Graeme Outerbridge put the final nail in the coffin of the National Liberal Party yesterday when he admitted that it would not be running any candidates in the General Election. As such, the party is "irrelevant", Mr. Outerbridge said. He's right, and that's too bad.

In the second half of the 1980s, the NLP had the potential to be the major opposition party, and even in the early 1990s it had the chance to be a viable third force in local politics.

Born when four moderate PLP MPs were expelled from the Opposition party simply for questioning Dame Lois Browne-Evans' leadership, the NLP originally aimed to be a moderating force in politics, a liberal voice without the labour ties of the PLP or the big business links of the United Bermuda Party.

But the resurgence and gradual move to the centre of the PLP under Frederick Wade, the consensus-building philosophy of the UBP, the NLP's own difficulties with defining just what it stood for and the immense problems third parties face under the Westminster system doomed it.

Since then-leader Gilbert Darrell lost his seat in 1989 (and the House lost a voice of common sense with his departure) the NLP has limped along until today when it effectively no longer exists. But it has left an important legacy. Had it not been formed, it is possible that the PLP would have felt no need to moderate and may well not have brought in Mr. Wade as leader. And the UBP certainly co-opted much of the NLP's centrist thinking as well.

In that way, the NLP helped to remake Bermuda politics and that is something for which all voters should be grateful.