Is it time to take the Lib Dems seriously again?

The Liberal Democrats have one task in the approaching general election. It is not to provide the next Prime Minister as boasted vaingloriously in the Jo Swinson era or even “to go back to your constituencies and prepare for government” as David Steele invited them, or rather their predecessor Liberal party, a generation ago. They had enough of that reality in the Cameron-Clegg coalition.

Whatever their successes at council level, the Lib Dems urgently need to restore their status as the third force in UK politics. With this comes the automatic right to two questions from the leader at every PMQs and a default presence for party luminaries on BBC Question Time. Good manners forbid mention too of the extensive patronage on quangos and in the House of Lords which the British state extends to its official underdog.

Above all, the Liberal Democrats could resume their position as a significant voice in the national debate. Last weekend’s TV schedule dramatised the party’s diminished status. The media mountain did not bow to political Mohammed as is customary during party conference season. Sir Ed Davey had to come up and down from Bournemouth to London to claim his allotted spot on the Sunday morning interview programmes.

To reclaim the glittering bronze prizes the Lib Dems must overhaul the SNP in number of MPs returned to Westminster. As one Yellow parrot grandee put it to me: “We should do much better at the election, the question is whether we only get twenty seats or so, or a total around forty – that matters.”

The Liberal Democrats have been adrift since 2015, when the Scottish Nationalist surge took them to 56 MPs, beaching the Lib Dems with just 8. At their highwater mark, under Charles Kennedy, the Lib Dems won 62 seats in the Commons to the SNP’s six, including eleven MPs in Scotland.

The Lib Dems are developing a “hyper-local strategy” to win back their lost position of eminence. They aim to hold the seats they have got and to pick off more target seats. Most of the top 80 constituencies in their sights are where Lib Dems are in second place behind the Conservatives.

This may well be the best tactic to make gains, it has served the Lib Dems well in by-elections where candidates are pretty much allowed to say whatever it takes to woo the locals. Unfortunately, it also cuts across their drive to be respected as a coherent third voice in national politics. Compromised positions designed to please everybody inevitably make the Lib Dems appear “woolly”, as bad as the others and unable to capitalise on the public’s cynicism that the other parties are over cautious and not saying what they really want.

The Lib Dems are sending out a muffled message on Europe. The party is also split on housebuilding targets and infrastructure projects such as HS2. It has abandoned its perennial “penny on income tax” for social programmes, even though this has not done them significant harm in the past. Since voters don’t expect the Liberal Democrats to be able to implement their programme in government, they could afford to be inspirational and aspirational.

Everybody knows that the Liberal Democrats think Brexit was a horrible mistake. They campaigned to reverse it. Yet eight years on Sir Ed Davey is doing all he can not to say so. In interviews he insists that rejoining the single market and the currency union, let alone the whole EU, are “not on the table”. That may be the reality facing the next government – but why do the Lib Dems, who won’t be in it, need to say so, especially since this puts them in an identical position to Labour? Starmer needs to win over his lost red wall and has good reason not to make Europe a major issue. The Liberal Democrats want to win over blue wall Tories, most of whom were Remainers anyway.

The party’s foreign affairs spokesperson Layla Moran broke ranks at a fringe meeting in Bournemouth, which was hardly disloyal: ultimately rejoining appears to be party policy as laid out in verbose policy documents. Meanwhile, no less a guru than Professor Sir John Curtice warned delegates that their party is haemorrhaging pro-European voters to Labour.

Presumably campaigners fear that a rejoin policy would put off any Leave voters they are likely to win over. This did not stop them from pulling off two recent stunning byelection victories in their former West Country heartlands, leave-voting but lost to David Cameron’s decapitation strategy in 2015 before the EU referendum.

The byelection in Mid Bedfordshire on 19 October will be a crucial test bed for the Liberal Democrats local campaign strategy. The party insists that the “byelection” should be “theirs” even though they were not in second place in 2019. The Conservative Nadine Dorries won with a 59.8 per cent share of the votes compared to Labour with 21.7 per cent and the Lib Dems on 12.6 per cent.  

The Lib Dems boast that this is a classic “leafy” constituency where Labour cannot hope to break through. Labour counters that Mid Bedfordshire may be made up of many villages but they are within commuting distance of London, Luton and Milton Keynes. The latest opinion polls in the byelection put Labour and the Tories neck and neck on 29 per cent each with the Liberal Democrats on 22 per cent. 

The Lib Dems insist that they are not in the business of doing deals with any party. But there is a difference between fighting hard in a constituency and taking it more gently. There appeared to be an understanding between the two opposition parties in recent byelections. Labour has already quietly disclosed fifty or so seats which are not a “priority” for them at the general election, mostly Lib Dem targets.

In the informal discussions which did, of course, take place this summer, Labour described the Lib Dem approach as entitled, disregarding the two parties’ actual strengths. “You’ve got one winnable byelection so you should give us one,” was the alleged Lib Dem attitude.

If the Lib Dems pull off a victory in Mid Beds it will be an unlikely triumph. If they do not and a split vote with Labour allows the Conservatives to hang on, they stand to suffer the most reputational damage because of their presumption.

The hard reality of electoral maths is that when Labour does well the Liberal Democrats do well, an anti-Tory tide lifts both their boats. They are in direct competition in only a handful of constituencies.

The Lib Dems’ hopes of reclaiming third place in British politics will likely hang on how successful Labour is in reclaiming seats lost to the SNP. Sir Keir Starmer faces a test of his own in the earlier byelection on 5 October in the SNP seat of Rutherglen and Hamilton West. The Lib Dems were in third place in Scotland at the last Westminster election with four MPs compared to 46 SNP, 6 Conservatives and 1 Labour, but they are the fifth party in the Holyrood parliament behind all the above parties and the Greens.

The Liberal Democrats mostly stand for centrist positions neither beholden to capital or Labour, with the occasional voguish libertarian flourish. On the big issues of the day, they are seldom united.

Because of Covid and the death of Elizabeth II, they are holding their first autumn conference since 2019. Their best hope of recovering their voice as Britain’s third force at the next election is that nobody pays detailed attention to what they are saying and doing in Bournemouth – except for the characteristically cheesy stunts involving bicycles, kayaks and blue Lego bricks.

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