All political parties are now used to the endless scrutiny of electoral pundits. With a seemingly endless tranche of data to trawl through, psephologists are forever asking how each party is doing – with even a drop of just 1% or 2% in the polls often leading to earnest debates about whether a bounce has come to an end or whether momentum is slipping away.
But if most parties (in a very crowded field) are used to dealing with questions about how they are performing, the Liberal Democrats are often faced with being asked: “Why are you here at all?” That’s if anyone can even bother to lob a question in their general direction.
There’s a paradox about the situation the Lib Dems find themselves in. After their near-death experience following the coalition government with the Conservatives, they have built an impressive bridgehead of 72 seats in Parliament. You have to go back more than a century to find a time when there were more MPs in the Liberal interest.
They have also finally managed to crack the First Past The Post electoral system, with their tally in the Commons almost identical to what it would have been had we voted under proportional representation.
Since 2024, they have perhaps dipped a little in the polls from the 12.6% vote share they secured at that election – but only by a tad. They remain a strong, if geographically patchy, force in local government. The personal ratings of their leader, Sir Ed
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Just as Clegg never recovered politically (though he’s been very well looked after elsewhere) over reneging on student fees, Ed Davey is permanently damaged by his failure to address the Post Office/Horizon scandal.
The Lib Dems are mainly a none of the above comfort zone. Thanks to 14 wasted years of the Conservatives’ left wing prime ministers we ended up with a Lib Dem MP in a once safe Conservative seat.
Needless to say our MP just votes along with Labour every time.
When you have a LibCON Party, you don’t leave much space for a LibDem one.
Which is precisely the calculation which the CON Party grandees and Cameron made and has resulted in neither of them capable of gaining a majority and winning a General Election.
Their problem is that the Tories stole Centrism, and they became a sump for identity nutjobs who weren’t quite Communist. Even Polanski was a LibDem.
Their recent electoral successes is just a byproduct of the public’s dissatisfaction with the mediocrity of the two main parties.