Ed Davey, the Lib Dem’s leader, has decided to stake his party’s chips on trying to take seats off the Conservatives
The world is hanging on every word from the virtual conference of Britain’s Liberal Democrats this weekend, as no one ever said. The Lib Dems are accustomed to being mocked when they are not simply ignored, but they have needed all the resilience they can muster since their coalition with the Tories ended with a devastating cull of their parliamentary representation at the 2015 election.
They have endured two more bad general elections since. They tried a relatively fresh face as leader, Tim Farron, and flopped in 2017. Then they fielded a highly familiar face as leader, Sir Vince Cable, but he was eased into retirement before fighting an election. In 2019, Jo Swinson vaingloriously declared that she could become prime minister and cancel Brexit only to be evicted from her parliamentary seat. Under her successor, whose name is on the tip of your tongue, the party’s poll rating bobbles along at around 8%, about a third of what they had before their support was cannibalised by the coalition experience.
