The Lib Dems could soon be the real opposition – instead of headline-grabbing stunts they should be trying to offer a real alternative to the relentless expansion of the state, says Emma Revell
It says a lot about an election campaign when most of the excitement seems to be coming from Ed Davey.
In just two short weeks since Sunak made his rather soggy general election announcement, the Liberal Democrat leader has ridden a rollercoaster, fallen off a paddleboard into Windermere, cycled down a remarkably steep hill in Wales, donned swimming shorts to go down a slip-n-slide in Somerset, and held a D-Day BBQ wearing the go-to summer outfit of all dads, a ‘King of the Grill’ apron. As my boss Robert Colvile remarked on Twitter/X, “The Lib Dem campaign makes a lot more sense once you realise they’re secretly bankrolled by CenterParcs.”
This isn’t a new strategy either. Past highlights from Davey’s leadership include toppling a blue foam wall with a tiny orange hammer, kicking off the party’s local election campaign back in March with a 2m tall hourglass and celebrating their gains six weeks later with a giant blue clock, to make the point that Rishi Sunak’s time in Downing Street was running out.
But what is the point? When scouring the internet to check these cringey photo-ops weren’t some kind of fever dream, Google helpfully informed me that people also ask “What is the point of the lib dems?” Quite.
If you think the last 14 years have been tricky for the Conservatives, spare a thought for Davey and co. The heady days of the 2010 leaders’ debates when it seemed like half the country was saying “I agree with Nick”, a 23 per cent vote share and entering coalition, Davey himself sitting at the Cabinet table responsible for Energy and Climate Change. But since then, what? Five different permanent leaders since 2015, the former Deputy PM losing his seat, never seeming to move more than a percent or two in the polls.
There is a widespread perception that the Lib Dems don’t really matter. That the only way their leader can actually get attention, is to go about chucking himself into lakes.
If I sound harsh, it’s only because I’m disappointed. It’s probably worth confessing I was a Liberal Democrat member going into and all throughout university. But about a decade ago, I ripped up my membership card – at around the point when much of the grassroots, frustrated with falling poll ratings, decided it was a shame they’d ever stopped being straight-up members of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) In other words, I was frustrated by the refusal of the Lib Dems to be, well, liberal.
And I still am. No one who has seen their first party political broadcast, which focused on Ed Davey as a parent and the additional pressure that comes from having a disabled son, can doubt his commitment to improving things for carers and for disabled children. But a commitment to building at least 150,000 new council and social homes a year doesn’t chime with reality, given the party’s flurry of by-election and council victories, based overwhelmingly on opposing local housebuilding.
Blaming poor mental health on social media giants and threatening to tax them, making misogyny a hate crime – these are hardly policies John Stuart Mill would think in keeping with his view of what it means to live in a liberal society. Not to mention the Remoaner-in-Chief air which hangs over the party to this day.
I am under no illusion that even the most passionate and articulate defence of classically liberal values would be an enormous vote winner. But in an election likely to return a Labour government who will, by their nature, proselytise about the good the state can do, and with a Conservative Party which has in recent years shown a frankly alarming tendency towards illiberalism, implementing sugar taxes and attempting to ban smoking forever. The country desperately needs a counterweight to slow our seemingly inevitable slide towards an ever expanding state. Even if the Tories don’t get completely annihilated at the ballot box they are likely to spend at least the next six months tearing themselves apart in a leadership election. The Lib Dems will be providing the real opposition for a while and they need to stand for something.
Perhaps, instead of making a fool of himself in front of the country, Ed Davey could try offering us a genuine alternative.
Emma Revell is external affairs director at the Centre for Policy Studies