So that’s a wrap at the Liberal Democrat Party conference in Brighton.
The conference season offers all the political parties a moment on the stage and a platform to state their ‘pitch’ to the electorate.
In normal times, the Liberal Democrats always face the challenge of having to mark out their political territory against their larger counterparts: The Labour and Conservative Parties. However, these are not normal times and so the Party’s Leader, Sir Ed Davey, delivered his conference speech at a time of five-party politics, with more competition for political territory.
The topline message in Sir Ed’s speech, and indeed the messaging the Party deployed in the local elections back in the Spring is grounded in antipathy felt by large parts of the electorate to President Trump, Reform UK and the direction that the Conservatives are taking under Kemi Badenoch. This Lib Dems portrays their party as a bulwark against these forces from the right.
Sir Ed faced a challenge early on in the conference with public criticism from the Lib Dem Leader of Devon County Council, Julian Brazil, that the party is “sleepwalking into irrelevance”. Cllr Brazil’s concern was that the Party is “not saying the things that people can relate to”.
The Lib Dems’ substantial gains at the last General Election were in mostly Conservative-held seats in the Home Counties, where large numbers of voters were not impressed with the Johnson-Truss-Sunak governments, took a dim view of Brexit and are distrustful of Reform. Badenoch’s ‘tack to the right’ in a bid to take on Nigel Farage leaves the political centre ground in the Home Counties open to the Lib Dems. So, for now, the answer to Cllr Brazil’s argument is that, in line with Napoleon’s maxim that “you shouldn’t interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake”, the Lib Dems still have a fair amount of mileage in defining themselves against the Conservatives and Reform.
However, we are in a moment of political flux and the prize for the Party is to lay long-term claim to these Home Counties constituencies, rather than see them flip back to Conservative control at the next general election. Their MPs have been hard at work building up their local profiles and getting involved in local issues but the party will need to back up their efforts with a policy platform that makes clear the trade-offs that Lib Dems in government would make – it is perfectly possible that the next Government will be a Labour-Lib Dem one. Redwood noted policy debates at the conference arounds the issue of housing with the Liberal Democrats for Growth group making a clear YIMBY case while others in the party baulked at the number of homes required under the standard methodology. As with many other policy areas, the Party will need to be clear where it stands on these issues, and be ready to negotiate with coalition partners – and a part of this preparation means being careful about the promises they make to the electorate.
To quote Napoleon again, Sir Ed Davey has so far been a “Lucky General” in that his Conservative political opponents have ceded ground to him without much of a fight. He should use the next two years to establish positive reasons for people to continue voting Lib Dem and lay the groundwork for the trade-offs that governing inevitably requires.
Blog by Gabriel Abulafia
