I used to work within Labour Westminster circles during the Blair and Brown years. At the time, I was a radical. Not hard left, but radical left, so my political world intersected at times with political fanatics. These weren't the old anarchists or communists, I loved to talk at length with them over a pint, even though we would disagree about things, but people who you might describe as Bolsheviks who believed in violent revolution, regardless of the context.
I once told my employer, a Labour minister, that these people were just waiting for a chink that they could exploit to take over the party. They were waiting and they were prepared. They saw Labour as their party that the 'Tories' Blair and Brown had stolen from them.
My employer laughed, and said it would never happen. At the time, of course, it seemed impossible, but I warned him that there was a lot of these people and they did a lot of damage. They strangled legitimate and organic movements in the attempt to harness them to acquire power, and those movements needed to rise and be heard so that democracy worked properly.
He still thought I was being silly.
Then Ed Miliband made a mistake.
At the time, I told my Conservative MP that it wasn't Corbyn that was the problem, but his followers: that they would wreck the political scene with significant repercussions. My MP laughed and shrugged it off: "Corbyn will never win. The British people are far too sensible." He didn't really understand the point I was trying to make: that it wasn't Corbyn per se, but his acolytes.
And look at where we are now. I know their kind. They don't actually care about transgender issues, what they care about is using them as a baseball bat to smash up the system to usher in "the revolution".
And it is the same with the LibDems. They are a weak party. They have few members, and hardly any prospective candidates, so they are ripe for entryism. And that is what has happened.