A home for what? The Lib Dems and their hollow pitch to ex-Tories

The Tories are languishing on 18 per cent in the polls. Labour is in self-destruct mode with a Prime Minister whose unpopularity grows by the week. And have the Liberal Democrats accomplished anything with their 72 MPs? The question almost isn’t worth asking, as I think you and I immediately know the answer – and it is a resounding no.

Their manifesto at the last election, which propelled them from 11 MPs to their current swollen total, was filled with as many gimmicks as Davey could do stunts. Nimbyism, green hobby-horses, constitutional tinkering – all dressed up with zip-lining photo-ops, zorbing expeditions, or paddle-boarding down some provincial river. Sure it would make a good Centre Parcs holiday, but for the third largest political party in the Commons?

The reason for these constant stunts is now clearer than ever: they had little better to offer. With each stunt, it helped disguise that the Liberal Democrats are without interesting ideas. Sure the Liberal Democrats like to earnestly debate policy areas, but they end up returning to ideas like a Worker Protection Enforcement Authority or an Independent Living Taskforce. Why bother with elected politicians with a plan to use Parliament and its powers to actually accomplish something of worth when it could just set up a new independent commission that will inevitably make sure that nothing ever changes?

It is why a year-later Davey has since continued the circus, even extending it to politics proper by boycotting Trump’s state banquet in some sort of Gaza protest; never mind the idea of actually meeting and influencing people.

And on it goes. In sunny Bournemouth this week, members gathered for Lib Dem conference and Davey summoned his group of MPs for a dip in the sea, just as their party was engulfed in a row over a bid to remove trans women from Liberal Democrat gender-based diversity quotas. I feel like this quite neatly sums it up – the party has made so little impact over the past year that this is what they still turn to.

Thankfully, the public appears to be cottoning on. Polling conducted by More in Common, presented to party members at conference, found that more than 60 per cent of voters think Davey’s antics make the party look less serious. That figure includes nearly half of Lib Dem supporters. Worse still for them: many voters remain unsure what the party actually stands for.

Scratch beneath the surface of Davey’s career and the emptiness shines through. As Postal Minister, he failed catastrophically to get to grips with the Horizon scandal. So much so that the Lib Dems’ own, somewhat cultish, Glee Club at conference now mocks his record in song:

“Ed, he was the minister, Now everything looks sinister, Ed claims he was never told the truth.

“Postman Ed, Postman Ed, Postman Ed ignored the case.

“Ed looked after mail, Such an epic fail, Ed should go and never lead again.”

The one interesting turn from Davey at his conference so far is on reducing welfare spending, with the Lib Dem leader declaring that there is “quite a lot of fraud” in PIP payments, – but there is no sign of the following welfare policy platform in the sense that the Tories have been outlining.

It is why Kemi Badenoch has been wise not to flinch at Davey’s use of The Telegraph as his platform pre-conference to denounce her “divisive politics”, alongside Nigel Farage. He promised instead to “provide a home” for “millions of former Conservatives repulsed by the extremes of both the right and the left”. A home for what, precisely? Anything more than litter-picking sessions and photo-op swims?

Research by James Breckwoldt using the British Election Study showed the Tories lost just 4 per cent of their 2019 vote to the Lib Dems. They lost 21 per cent to Reform. Even in seats the Lib Dems gained, more Conservatives defected to Reform than to Davey. And Conservative-to-Lib Dem switchers have views far closer to still traditional Tory voters than other Lib Dems. 

Take immigration. Onward found that 53 per cent of these switchers wanted numbers “cut a lot” and a further 22 per cent cut “a little”. Yet the Lib Dem policy remains to expand “safe and legal routes” – as though record legal migration were not already a central issue. On crime, a similar situation applies. Those who left the Tories for the Lib Dems have views strikingly similar to those who also went to Reform. There was no ideological conversion, nor a vote for ideas, but a search for who was best placed to turf out a Conservative Party that had grown complacent and failed to accomplish what it said it would set out to do.

Winning these voters back is not by tacking towards the Lib Dems, although that might be hard anyway when they don’t really stand for anything. If anything, the solution is found in further articulating the sensible beliefs and policies of a real Conservative Party – one that comes with a plan that would be clearly followed through on, rather than falling to the sidelines, as has happened in the past.

The country will not again be arrested by stunts and platitudes, from any party. It is why when Davey rises at PMQs, there are groans across the chamber. His interventions are forgettable at a time that demands a real political programme: slashing immigration, fixing the planning system, and returning authority to elected politicians from random quangos – not setting up even more.

The Liberal Democrats are trying to make a virtue of emptiness, with no agenda beyond saying little. Most of their gains came at Conservative expense – and those voters should be won back as they deserve more than a politics of nothing.