Editing Liberal Unionist Party (section)

==In popular culture and the media==
In [[Oscar Wilde]]'s play ''[[The Importance of Being Earnest]]'' there is an exchange between Jack Worthing and Lady Bracknell about his suitability as a match for her daughter Gwendolen.

:LADY BRACKNELL : [Sternly]... What are your politics?

:JACK: Well, I am afraid I really have none. I am a Liberal Unionist.

:LADY BRACKNELL: Oh, they count as Tories. They dine with us.  Or come in the evening, at any rate.

The play was first performed at the Queen's Theatre London on 14 February 1895 and ran for 83 performances. Jack Worthing's declaration that he was in essence apolitical but – if pressed – would say Liberal Unionist was a joke that would have appealed to the audiences that saw the play in that period. As a party that depended on an electoral pact with the Tories to maintain their MPs in parliament, the Liberal Unionists had to at least appear to be also 'Liberal' in matters not connected with Home Rule including some measures of promoting reform. To someone like Jack, the Liberal Unionists' attempts to be two things at the same time but in different places would have appealed with his double identity ('Well, my name is Ernest in town and Jack in the country', he says in act 1).

Since 1895 the then topical 'Liberal Unionist' reference has caused some problems with later productions of the play. Usually the line is retained – despite its reference to a long dead political issue (and also party) but it was altered or omitted in at least two film versions of the play.

In [[The Importance of Being Earnest (1952 film)|1952 film version]] directed by [[Anthony Asquith]] (the son of a former British Liberal Prime Minister [[H. H. Asquith]]) Jack answers that he is a 'Liberal' rather than 'Liberal Unionist'. Lady Bracknell's answer remains the same. In 1952 this comment was applicable to the then Liberal Party's precarious political position, whose few remaining MPs were largely in constituencies where the Conservative Party refused to stand for fear of splitting an established Liberal vote and letting in the Labour Party. Since then, many adaptations of the play have kept this brief mention of the obscure political party. However, in the [[The Importance of Being Earnest (2002 film)|2002 film version]] which starred [[Judi Dench]], [[Colin Firth]], [[Rupert Everett]] and [[Reese Witherspoon]] – the lines were dropped yet episodes and characters in an earlier version of the play that Wilde had been encouraged to drop before the play's first performance were re-incorporated.