It must be pretty depressing being a Liberal Democrat right now. No leader. Not much profile. Very little media presence. Polling that hovers between six and eight per cent (when they nearly got 12 per cent at the last election).
Just a year ago, it was all so different. Stellar local election results. Second place in the UK’s slice of the 2019 European elections, easily beating Labour into third. It all set the Lib Dems off on a sugar rush of enthusiasm. They got a vigorous and visible new leader, in Jo Swinson. MPs defected to them. They surged in the polls, actually taking the lead in one poll conducted in late May.
Then it all went wrong. Labour didn’t split, much as it became a benighted and unhappy place: that meant it remained the only realistic receptacle for Remain voters across much of the country, even as it inched its way painfully towards promising the referendum so many considering a Lib Dem vote wanted. Undecideds began to seep back towards the bigger party on the left.
Worse was to come. It appeared that the more voters saw of Swinson, the less they liked her. First she said that she might try to cancel Brexit without another referendum, and then backtracked a little by saying that would only happen if she won an overall majority – annoying everyone by appearing to defy both democracy and reality.
In the end, of course, Swinson lost her seat. So did all those MPs who’d defected to her party. The Lib Dems somehow managed to return fewer MPs than they had in 2017. They’d blown it – just like they’d failed to break through at their previous high tides in 1974, 1983 and 2010.
So where does all that leave the Lib Dems? In the midst of an identity crisis that has even led to overheated talk about the party ceasing to exist as a national force, merging with the Greens or entering some form of electoral pact with Labour.
The parties’ options are to some extent dramatised by the choice of leader now before them. In one corner, the dependable and familiar Ed Davey, happy to serve in a coalition government with David Cameron and George Osborne in return for a series of advances on renewable power (he was secretary of state for energy and climate change).
Davey is broadly representative of the party’s mainstream before the Remain surge and Swinson debacle: deeply committed to stronger environmental policies, better and more strongly integrated social policies such as help for carers and social care, but also deeply liberal, instinctively favourable to markets and free trade.
Which brings us to Layla Moran, Davey’s rival for the leadership. Much younger than Davey, perhaps more exciting and dynamic, elevating Moran to the leadership would be a huge risk. She has spoken of taking the Lib Dems decisively to the left, shedding the baggage of the coalition, challenging Labour on that side of politics. She at least encourages talk about the possibility of universal basic services including water and energy.
Crudely, the Lib Dems must choose between a leader who will frighten no one but who may also excite very few, or a new option, a figurehead who could scare and invigorate in almost equal measure.
Commentators wedded to the more liberal and even libertarian strands of Lib Dem thought, as well as those who want the party to appeal to floating ex-Tory voters in Conservative seats the Lib Dems must win to again form a substantial bloc in the House of Commons, are horrified by Moran’s candidacy.
Many of these more centrist Lib Dems suspect that Moran will “Corbynise” the party – take it to the left, into deep Green territory, perhaps into a formal link-up with the Green Party, and associate it with any and all fashionable causes that happen to run through highly engaged and always-online activists’ veins that particular week.
So what is it to be? Stagnation with Davey or a roll of the dice and possible bankruptcy with Moran? It’s not, in the end, a particularly enticing choice and the suspicion lingers that yet another generation of Lib Dems will have to wait around until a really well-rounded leader emerges.
In truth, though, all of the more dramatic outcomes – fading, merger, alliance – are unlikely. The Lib Dems still have organisational and electoral strengths that mean they’re likely to be alive and kicking long after their present malaise has lifted.
They’ve been here before. All through the 1950s they drifted through a grey era of two-party politics, unsure whether they should even exist, reduced at one point to five MPs and (in 1951) just 2.5 per cent of the vote. They often relied on the Tories giving them a free run against Labour; the Conservatives could probably have snuffed them out altogether.
It was the vigorous and high-profile leadership of Jo Grimond that brought them back, talking about re-equipping Britain for a more competitive and scientific age – and getting into Europe – long before Harold Wilson and Edward Heath made those their signature policies as Labour and Tory leaders respectively. The lesson should be clear: however low the third party goes, it can come back.
The Liberal Democrats have 120,000 members. It should not be beyond the wit of a party with a huge base in local government, a well-recognised brand and a long and proud history to find a way to fight back – especially when they actually have new electoral opportunities opening up before them.
The disappointment of 2019 actually disguised a quiet landslide towards the Lib Dems in some parts of Southern England. In 2017, they came second in 38 seats, but in 2019 that number shot up to 91. Wherever there were graduates moving out of inner cities, high numbers of Remain voters, or middle-class social liberals, the Lib Dem vote share shot up (by 23 points in Wimbledon and an astonishing 28 points in Esher and Walton).
That puts the Lib Dems in pole position to make at least some advances against the Conservatives next time, as a recent report from think thank The UK In A Changing Europe makes clear. Thirteen Tory seats are a five-point swing away from Lib Dems gains: many of these, such as Cambridgeshire South or Guildford, could easily move from blue to yellow at the next election.
It is values, about social issues, personal choice, foreign aid, Europe and immigration that separate such voters from their more reliably Conservative neighbours. They are very highly informed and they are very much open to persuasion. They could be attracted by a radical offer untainted by endless Labour infighting or too much state control. It is by no means clear that such voters would be put off even by a left-wing Moran leadership, as long as its wilder shores remain just talk.
Consider, too, the overall strategic position. The Labour Party is very unlikely indeed to make the 124 gains it needs for an absolute majority next time, though the gain of the 40 or so seats needed to deprive the Conservatives of a majority themselves is by no means unrealistic.
In that situation, Labour leader Keir Starmer might well lead a weak and vulnerable Labour-minority government. He will need the Lib Dems, and he will at the very least have to bargain with them all the time if he wants to get any legislation through.
What we really know about modern British politics is that it changes all the time. Prediction is hazardous. Voters are volatile. The Liberal Democrats are in despair now, but they’ve been here before and Grimond brought them back from the dead.
They aren’t going to win any new seats if their vote share halves next time. But if either Davey or Moran can make any sort of impression, if Starmer makes Labour seem less poisonous in Southern England, if the Lib Dems can target the Liberal England clearly visible on the electoral map, they stand a chance of electing more MPs and playing at least some sort of role supporting a non-Conservative government.
Whoever they elect as leader, there are few grounds for despair: only for more hard work. Like Grimond before them, they face a steep and daunting path. But there is a path, clearly visible, they just need the discipline to walk it.
Glen O’Hara is professor of modern and contemporary history at Oxford Brookes University. He is the author of a series of books and articles about modern Britain, including The Paradoxes Of Progress: Governing Post-War Britain, 1951-1973 (2012) and The Politics Of Water In Post-War Britain (2017). He is currently working on a history of the Blair government of 1997-2007. He blogs at “Public Policy And The Past” and tweets as @gsoh31.
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