The real lesson is that the old Liberal Party's decline in the 1929 election could have been avoided if Lloyd George had done more wacky water-based stunts.
Fun fact: if you check the full list of every party designation entered in 2024, there is still a "Liberal Party" running independently of the Liberal Democrats, that got a few thousand votes. I think they were the anti-merger Liberals who stayed apart in 1988 and never gave up, unlike D.Owen.
Issues of political geneology: the current "SDP" has no link to the old one since the old one was officially defuncted c.1990 and Owen endorsed the Tories. The current Liberal Party might have a reasonable claim to be continuous with the grand old Liberal Party that declined 100 years ago.
Socialist Labour Party still exists, though it never got mentioned during the brief time Corbyn fans were wondering out having their own breakaway from the Starmer Party.
