BRIGHTON, England — The Liberal Democrats have never been chirpier.
Britain’s centrist party has been on an extended high at its seaside conference this week after securing its best ever general election result and giving the Conservatives a kicking.
Capturing the mood, more than 400 hyped-up activists and MPs belted out tunes and let off steam at the party’s Glee Club conference get-together in Brighton Monday night.
A songbook of rewritten tunes in hand, members of the Europhile party tore through an expletive-filled, booze-fueled version of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” — adapted to “Bollocks-bloody-bugger-knackers-f**king-c**t to Brexit.”
Lib Dem Chief Whip Wendy Chamberlain joined a stirring rendition of “Ode to Liz Truss” — a paean to the U.K.’s shortest-serving prime minister to the tune of The Beatles’ “Let It Be.”
“Outlasted by a Lettuce, Lettuce Liz,” they crooned.
“We’re having a whale of a time,” Lib Dem Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper said.
Her party certainly has reasons to be cheerful. But senior figures want to temper some of that giddiness with warnings about the need to stay focused.
And there are big questions about how exactly the Lib Dems, long used to taking on the Tories, carve out a niche when there’s a center-left Labour government in power.
‘Wildest dreams’
In the July snap election called by the Conservatives, the Lib Dems won 72 seats — a huge leap up from the 11 the party managed to secure in 2019. A ruthless campaign of targeting winnable seats made the orange warriors the third largest party in the U.K. parliament again after a near-decade of obscurity.
“They’re delighted,” said Sean Kemp, a former adviser when the party was in a coalition government with the Tories. “It was better than their wildest dreams,” he said of the result.
It’s a remarkable turnaround for a party that crashed from 57 to eight seats in 2015 after joining a coalition with the right-wing Tories in 2010, shredding a promise to abolish university tuition fees along the way.
Lib Dem Chief Whip Wendy Chamberlain joined a stirring rendition of “Ode to Liz Truss.” | Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images
Subsequent elections saw the party stuck in double digits as former strongholds in the south west of England stayed Tory and university cities plumped for Labour. An official policy of totally reversing Brexit in 2019 was a disaster in an election in which Boris Johnson was promising to settle the issue for good.
There are few things worse in politics than being so marginal. “It’s enormously hard going,” said Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dems’ longest serving MP who’s been in the Commons since 2001. “You’re constantly having to try to get your voice heard.”
Sewage success
The Lib Dem comeback, when it came, meant wading through a load of sh*t.
As part of a relentless focus on local issues, the party kicked up a stink about raw sewage being pumped by unscrupulous water firms into Britain’s rivers.
MPs and activists repeatedly highlighted poor water quality across target Conservative seats. Consistent environmental messaging won over traditional Tory voters disenchanted with the governing party. “Sewage in our rivers is something that people can really relate to,” said Will Forster, the newly-elected MP for Woking in Surrey.
Alongside sewage, the party’s major focus was on the dire state of the National Health Service and social care. It’s a policy area set to be repeatedly mentioned in this parliament — with health concerns especially acute for older voters more likely to support the Conservatives in battleground seats.
Lib Dem Leader Ed Davey — who has personal experience caring for his late mother and son, John, who has a neurological condition — has promised to be a personal voice for carers. Closing Lib Dem conference Tuesday, he vowed to continue raising the issues facing carers in parliament. “Care and carers must not be forgotten and ignored any longer,” he said.
Rigorous tactical messaging seems to have paid off for the Lib Dems — and meant some seats turned orange unexpectedly. “A lot of us would have seen some of these seats as being two election projects rather than one,” said Carmichael. “We were able to make up ground much more quickly.”
The party was, however, assisted by a poor Tory ground operation, as the party became engulfed with internal fissures following 14 years in government. “The Conservative campaign missed where public opinion was,” conceded a senior Lib Dem figure — granted anonymity to speak frankly about the campaign. The Conservatives were, they said, “almost non-existent compared to the level of campaigning we’ve been used to in marginal seats before.”
Davey also managed to grab precious coverage with an eclectic mix of PR stunts including paddle-boarding and bungee jumping. That helped boost his own profile and position the Lib Dems as a sunny alternative to the more strait-laced Conservative and Labour leaders. “We take our politics very seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously,” Cooper said.
More than 400 hyped-up activists and MPs belted out tunes and let off steam at the party’s Glee Club conference. | Carl Court/Getty Images
Right on cue, Davey arrived at conference in Brighton this week on a jet ski. He played a spot of beach volleyball — and even closed his speech to the gathering with a spot of dad-dancing as confetti streamed down, telling delegates about meeting his wife Emily at an internal housing policy working group. “If you want to find love, don’t join Tinder. Join the Liberal Democrats!” he declared.
Now the hard work really begins.
Corridors of power
With the center-left Labour Party firmly in government, Davey has promised to lead a “more constructive, more mature” opposition party. But his Lib Dems will also have to be realistic about the impact they can have in this parliament.
They have bagged the role of chair of three parliamentary committees — health, the environment and petitions — upping the chance to score hits on the government. But Labour’s landslide working majority of 167 means the Lib Dems are unlikely to cause major upsets to the government’s agenda.
As a case in point, Lib Dem MPs were in recent weeks united in opposing Labour’s removal of state winter fuel payments to most pensioners — and yet the government still won a vote on the measure by more than 100 votes.
“What we’ve got is a much improved campaigning and media platform,” the senior party figure quoted above said. And they insisted: “There will be lots of scope for us to be able to push the government to go further and to be bolder.”
“We can criticize the government for getting something wrong and they have to address that,” said Carmichael, who now chairs the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in the House of Commons.
“Whereas if the Conservatives try and criticize the government, the immediate and very obvious response is, ‘well, we have to do this, because you left us in a mess.’”
Shoring up
Amid the ebullience on display at conference — gold confetti fell in the hall at the end of Davey’s speech as MPs danced and sang along to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” — some in the party are urging the troops to stay grounded.
“That guerrilla mentality that you have as a very small party is a good one to keep when you are the third party,” Carmichael said. He believes the Lib Dems should now aim to “outperform the Conservatives as a party of opposition” in a bid to seal the deal.
Davey has spoken about needing to “finish the job” against the Tories, aiming to gain seats the Conservatives narrowly held such as Shadow Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Surrey constituency of Godalming and Ash.
The Lib Dems will also need to hang on to their existing seats — and sustain support that may have only been leant to Davey’s party this time around amid deep frustration with 14 years of Conservative rule.
Expect the party to keep banging the drum on local issues. Allowing Lib Dem MPs to become the figurehead on big causes can, the theory goes, help convert what were votes against another party into positive votes for the Lib Dems. “I’ve taken tactical votes from people over the years,” Carmichael said. “Eventually you can convert tactical votes into positive votes.”
Lib Dem Leader Ed Davey has promised to be a personal voice for carers. | Carl Court/Getty Images
A stronger footing in Labour areas the Lib Dems used to do well in, such as the university strongholds of Cambridge and Sheffield, is also an ambition. But don’t expect a big push into Labour territory. Going after government seats is not an immediate priority, given most Lib Dem second-place finishes this time around were against the Tories.
“They’re trying to pick their battles where they’re not just haranguing Labour all the time, but can be a voice that says ‘you should be doing better on these issues,’” Kemp said. Excessive Labour attacks could, he argued, encourage soft Tory voters back to the Conservatives.
For now, the Lib Dems — whether they’re belting out songs about Tory defeat at Glee Club or planning the next headline-grabbing stunt for Davey — are basking in their electoral success.
But they’ve ridden big waves before, and will have to work hard again to avoid complacency.
“The party has got to remain hungry. It’s got to remain ambitious” said Carmichael. “We’re going to be giving ourselves two pats in the back. But once that’s done, then I think it’s back to the hard yards again.”
