Ed Davey owes much of his election success to Boris Johnson – and in more ways than one. The slide-loving, bungee-jumping, paddleboard-slipping Lib Dem leader has, like Johnson on his zipwire, learned how to capture media attention while evading being placed on a conventional political axis. One day he’s intoning soulfully on social care in the Commons; the next rocking up to party conference on a jet ski. He wants inheritance tax hiked but decries Labour’s plans for VAT on school fees. Such shenanigans enabled him in the election to appear both serious and silly, left and right, using any publicity to deliver ruthlessly crafted messages on health, sewage and the cost-of-living crisis.
‘It would be very nice for the partyto have an economic policy,’remarked one member
The strategy paid off handsomely and 72 Lib Dem MPs were elected in July. There was a mood of euphoria at the conference in Brighton this week, as activists celebrated the party’s best result since the days of Asquith and Lloyd George. A record 61 gains will enable Davey to draw from a bigger talent pool for his upcoming reshuffle. Ex-councillors Josh Babarinde and Max Wilkinson impressed the conference on various panels. Academics such as Al Pinkerton and Mike Martin offer useful foreign expertise in parliament and the media – a role played a generation earlier by Ming Campbell. After a decade of being overstretched, frontbenchers can share the burden better in their mission to make further gains in the Blue Wall. In private, some Tories admit to admiring the quality of the intake – despite the fact that Davey’s MPs are strongly anti-Conservative (one newbie even boasts a tattoo of the Lib Dem bird on her back).
The Lib Dems are eyeing future gains in the 20 constituencies where they finished second to the Tories. Most of these adjoin existing seats, which helps campaign efforts. Conference yielded a million-pound war chest from business fees alone, and greater sums are expected next year. Hushed talk of hitting the magic figure of 100 MPs circulated among excited activists in Brighton bars.
Much could depend on who the Conservatives pick as their next leader. The conventional wisdom is that Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch would best serve Liberal fortunes. Yet with the Tories in opposition, it is Labour to which the Lib Dems must respond. Most attendees in Brighton instinctively want the Starmer government to succeed: history suggests that when Labour does well, so do the Liberals. But while many members’ values might align with Labour’s, their newly converted voters could be less keen. As one pollster puts it: ‘How does a party whose voters disproportionately earn more, send kids to private school and pay more into Treasury coffers than other voters deal with a Labour government that is against their interests?’
In their quest to both keep their Tory gains and hold Labour to account, the Lib Dem response could be summed up in three letters: NHS. All four days of this week’s conference centred on the subject of healthcare. Voters across the spectrum consistently rank it as the most important public service and ‘the Tories can’t talk about it because they broke it’, says an aide. In the past, the Lib Dems have been dismissed as a single-issue party on Iraq (2005) and Brexit (2019). Party strategists now hope the same will be true of accessing local healthcare. They sense an opening here as Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, pushes on with plans for reform. Davey has already demanded immediate NHS investment without conditions, allowing him to outflank Labour on the left – to applause from the Tory shires.
It suits the Lib Dems to focus on healthcare because both their members and the voters care a great deal about it. Yet other causes are much less popular with the wider public. During Davey’s Q&A session with journalist Carolyn Quinn, she asked who in the hall thought the UK should apply to rejoin the EU: almost everyone raised their hands. At conference fringe events, activists clashed over a group defending single-sex spaces while the floor backed abolishing jail sentences of less than 12 months. The election manifesto, drawn up by members, was notably more sympathetic to illegal migrants than the two main parties. Much of Davey’s success in the summer was his discipline in focusing his party’s efforts on issues which mattered most to voters: repeating that feat might be trickier next time around.
Moreover, while this summer marked an electoral resurgence for the Liberal Democrats, it has not been accompanied by a great revival of Liberal intellectual thought. Some 20 years ago, the party had The Orange Book and various ginger groups to explore its next steps. In Brighton there were no leading lights articulating a new vision for the party – and few MPs thinking about how to turn Liberal ideals into reality. ‘It would be very nice for the party to have an economic policy,’ remarked one member on the conference floor.
Perhaps July’s result shows how little ideas actually matter: that being a vehicle for anti-Tory sentiment is sufficient for the Lib Dems to prosper. ‘In some ways we were blessed by the mistakes of others,’ former leader Tim Farron acknowledged last week. ‘How do we go and make our own luck?’ That lack of a distinct identity could inhibit Davey’s efforts to project his party as an effective opposition to the Labour government, and make the Lib Dems the master of their own fate. In urban areas, too, there is concern about the lack of work to fight off advances from the Greens.
For now, though, most Lib Dems are simply happy to enjoy their victory lap. Few have any idea yet what the next election will look like, though Farron’s post-election report will inform the strategy when it is published in the spring. In the interim, delivery is key. The new intake has been given the instruction: ‘Go back to your constituencies – and prepare for casework.’ Repeating the Lib Dems’ most vote-efficient campaign of the past 50 years will be a challenge, but it’s one that Davey’s team will relish. ‘Winning feels good,’ remarked one newly elected MP as he headed off into the Brighton night. ‘We should do it more often!’
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