Are the Lib Dems about to make a comeback?

With local elections approaching and electoral volatility returning as the Johnson Government bleeds from its self-inflicted wounds, it is worth dusting off Clive James cruel chatshow question to the late Charles Kennedy: “The Liberal Democrats – what’s the point?”

What’s the point, that is, other than being an unlikely stepping stone for Nick Clegg, another party leader, first to become UK Deputy Prime Minister and, now, a richly rewarded President in Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta-verse.

When they are on form, the Lib Dems, and their predecessor parties, the Liberals and the SDP, have always been disruptors and mould breakers. There is now the glimmer of a chance that they could soon be back in the game again.

My introduction to British politics was a dirty shopfront on Barnes High Street which I trailed past as a small boy. I was curious about it because, unlike its busy neighbours, it was never open. Instead, the window featured a large glossy black and white photograph on a stand of Anthony Royle, matinee idol style, resplendent with dark eyebrows and starchy collar and tie.

Royle was a mysterious figure. No-one my parents knew had ever actually seen him in the flesh, let alone met him. Even so, I was informed, he existed and was our local MP: the Conservative MP for the Richmond (Surrey) constituency. At this point, my mother usually added that he was probably going to lose to the Liberals at the next election, in spite of the vote he could rely on from my father.

He never lost. Sir Anthony, as he became, was immovable. He represented the constituency solidly from 1959 until 1983, when he went to his reward in the upper house as Lord Fanshawe of Richmond and handed over the renamed Richmond and Barnes seat to Jeremy Hanley, a sometime Tory party chairman, for another 14 years.

Then came 1997. The “new dawn” was brightest for Tony Blair and New Labour, but the rising anti-Tory tide also more than doubled the Liberal Democrat tally to 46 MPs. Jenny Tonge became the first of a trio of feisty LibDem women to wrest Richmond from the Conservatives. She would be followed by Susan Kramer and then Sarah Olney, who snatched what was now Richmond Park back from local laird Zac Goldsmith.

Much to the chagrin of Blair’s mentor Roy Jenkins and the Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown, New Labour did so well in 1997 that they had to govern on their own with a massive overall majority. Still, for the Lib Dems, the taunts of all fitting into a telephone box were over at last, though only temporarily as it turned out.

For the thirteen years of Labour hegemony, the Liberal Democrats rode high, enjoying the deference due to the undisputed third force in British politics, including multiple appointments to the House of Lords and third billing at PMQs. The party won a record 62 seats in 2005.

Nobody disputed Clegg’s right to the third podium in the 2010 Leaders Debates on TV, a status which was confirmed when David Cameron and Gordon Brown obsequiously turned “I agree with Nick” into a catchphrase.

It almost seemed inevitable when a disappointing election result for the Conservatives led Cameron to invite the Liberal Democrats to join him in the UK’s first coalition government for eighty years. It was an offer no serious political party could refuse.

It was also the moment when it all started to go wrong for the Third Force. Tory negotiator William Hague saw the future clearly at the time of the deal, telling his wife “I think I’ve just killed the Liberal Democrats”.

The Liberal Democrats fielded a team of competent Cabinet ministers including David Laws, Steve Webb, Danny Alexander and Ed Davey, the current party leader. But it quickly became clear that the voters didn’t see the point of the LibDems if they were just going to join the Tories.

As a gesture of unity, Clegg u-turned on his party’s election manifesto pledge to abolish student tuition fees, but Cameron outmanoeuvred him by staging a referendum on Electoral Reform which was bound to be defeated.

In 2015 Cameron and his strategist Lynton Crosby won a Conservative majority by ruthlessly targeting their former Coalition colleagues for “decapitation”. Nemesis reduced the Lib Dems to just eight MPs. With 56 of their own, the Scottish Nationalist Party supplanted them as the third force in UK politics.

The Lib Dems have languished there since, with Labour almost as firmly lodged into second place behind the Conservatives. But since Owen Patterson, Geoffrey Cox and partygate the opinion polls are stirring again.

Labour has overtaken the Conservatives 38.9% to 33.3% in the latest ElectionMaps UK Nowcast poll of polls. The LibDems have merely consolidated their share just above 10%.

But with Labour up and Conservatives down, the Lib Dems projected tally of MPs rises from the present 13 (11 at the General Election plus the North Shropshire and Chesham & Amersham byelections) to 19 or so. Labour would be the largest party but short of an overall majority, with around 305 MPs.

With the Tories of on 242, Labour could form a stable minority government with a confidence and supply deal with the LibDems, even if the SNP stood to one side.

These figures are illustrative but they indicate the symbiotic relationship between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The Lib Dems don’t feature in Labour’s top 30 target list, while their top 30 targets are almost all Conservative except for Cambridge and Nick Clegg’s former base of Sheffield Hallam.

After the near-death embrace of David Cameron’s Conservatives, no Liberal Democrat is contemplating another full coalition. But last year’s by-election victories suggest that voters are beginning to forget or forgive the coalition as well, although Nick Clegg’s promotion in California might rekindle old resentments.

This means that a formal “progressive pact”, as advocated by some activists, is not necessary between the two parties. They will naturally concentrate resources on the seats they are most likely to win, and they won’t need to waste energy fighting each other.

This has already been demonstrated in recent by-elections, where Keir Starmer stood back in Chesham and Shropshire and the Liberal Democrats were thin on the ground in Batley, and all but disappeared in Bexley which the Conservatives held anyway.

Keir Starmer and Ed Davey have much in common. They are both middle-class white men in their late 50s with knighthoods for public service, who are trying to stabilize their parties after radical adventures.

According to Vince Cable, a former Lib-Dem leader and a man who should know, being “dull and boring” will be an asset for party leaders at the next election, fighting to end incompetence, corruption, inequality and a chaotic Tory Prime Minister.

Reform, the economy and public services are almost bound to be the issues on the voter’s mind. Labour and the Liberal Democrats are not very far apart on any of them. That’s what they should campaign about; quietly, they could also adopt mirrored manifesto commitments on closer trade ties with the EU and electoral reform.

The point of the Liberal Democrats is what it always has been except for the mathematical accident of the Coalition – they can help bring the Tories down.