The Liberal Democrats are planning to limit their ambitions at the next general election as they battle to regain their place as the third-largest party in parliament after nearly 20 years of disappointing poll results.
Meeting in Bournemouth this week, the mood in the Lib Dems was buoyant after a string of by-election wins in the past two years – but also haunted by memories of the party’s last full-blown conference, in the same venue in 2019, when MPs believed they were on the brink of winning dozens more seats but ended up with crushing disappointment.
There are currently just 15 Lib Dem MPs even after the four by-election victories which have boosted the party under Sir Ed Davey and attracted an influx of cash from donors. Since the 2015 election which almost wiped out the party, it has been smaller than the SNP in the House of Commons.
“2005 was the last successful election we had,” a senior Lib Dem insider told i. “Even in 2010 we were losing MPs.” Asked why the party is ditching both policies and strategy used in previous years, another source said bluntly: “Well, we won 11 MPs at the last election.”
The party has played down the importance of winning support from the country as a whole and is targeting a small minority of seats, perhaps 30 in total, where it came second to the Conservatives in 2019 – mostly in South East England, but some in the South West and a handful on the outskirts of cities in the North.
“It’s useless for us to be amassing votes all around the country in places we’re not going to win,” one strategist said. “We need to amass votes where we will win.”
The campaigns team, led by party veteran Dave McCobb, bases its target list on which seats have the most active local teams which are making progress in winning over voters and the number of targets is constantly shifting – although most insiders agree that doubling the cohort of MPs to 30 or more, and overtaking the SNP, would be a strong result.
Not even every sitting MP will receive the resources needed to defend their seat if the party determines that it is unwinnable. “We’re going to be ruthless,” a source said. “Every candidate needs to show they are on track to win, and that includes the by-election winners.”
One MP admitted: “We can’t put a number on our seats because we just don’t know – and we’ve been burned before.” In all recent general elections, the party ended up pouring resources into constituencies where it ended up badly beaten, while missing narrowly missing out elsewhere.
Those who were involved with the 2019 campaign, and the Bournemouth conference which proceeded it, are obsessed with avoiding the mistakes of that disastrous period when the Lib Dems thought they could surf a wave of anti-Brexit sentiment to win as many as 100 seats. “Last time it felt like a lot of Kool-Aid had been drunk,” one campaigner said. “To be honest, it was like a cult.” Another joked: “This seems like the conclusion of a long process of therapy. Coming back to the scene of the trauma.”
The party has abandoned Brexit as the core of its campaign message – although Lib Dem activists remain as passionate about the topic as ever. MPs told i healthcare and the cost of living were the two most common issues brought up on the doorstep by voters in the target “Blue Wall” seats the party is trying to win.
They privately insist that the party has to be pragmatic in its approach to its European policy – despite demands from activists to take a more strident position. “Realistically we can’t run an election campaign based on rejoining the EU,” one MP said. “There just isn’t the bandwidth or the appetite for it right now.”
The most public row at the conference was over whether the Lib Dems should endorse national housebuilding targets, which the leadership was eager to drop as they seek to compete with the Tories in suburban and rural seats where development is unpopular. Sir Ed experienced a “rite of passage” for leaders when he lost a crunch vote on the issue, forced by the party’s youth wing.
The heated nature of the debate – on both sides – exposed how much of a divisive issue the policy could be. During the discussion on the conference floor, speakers took swipes at one another and members of the audience heckled those with opposing views. Activists warned Sir Ed, who sat in the front row of the audience, that the party was at risk of “letting down younger voters and losing the youth vote, again”.
Others opposing the targets said they would produce an “attack line that will be on every Tory leaflet”. One party insider said: “The Lib Dem conference is not usually like this, it shows the strength of feeling on both sides.”
The other question that loomed over this conference – likely to be the last before the next election – was on the issue of election pacts, unofficial or otherwise. The Lib Dems did not want to discuss it and Sir Ed and his aides dodged repeated questions from journalists on the possibility of a deal with Labour.
The ever-closer alignment of policies, however, told a different story. Sir Ed’s keynote speech centred around “broken Britain” and how this can be repaired: building a stable economy, focusing on NHS reform with the use of tougher targets, forming a closer relationship with the EU without raising the issue of rejoining – all of which closely mirror Labour‘s key policies.
The question of whether the Lib Dems could support Sir Keir Starmer in a hung parliament is premature, according to party officials who fear discussing it in public would appear arrogant. “We have had leaders who were more focussed on what happens the day after the general election,” one said. “We’re not going to do that.”
