Sir Ed Davey could easily boost the Lib Dems’ popularity by making the most of Johnson’s incompetence

Given her lively campaign, charisma and the sheer scale of the challenges facing the Liberal Democrats, it was a little surprising that Layla Moran didn’t poll more impressively in the party’s leadership election. Plainly, even as they languish in the polls and subsist with minimal Commons representation, and with decidedly poor immediate prospects, the party membership still didn’t feel like taking a chance on Ms Moran. The more depressing question for the Liberal Democrat Party is why only 57.6 per cent of the 114,000 or so of its membership could be bothered to cast a ballot for either candidate. Surely even they were not overcome by the apparent futility of it all?

Sir Ed Davey, who may have been thought to be the safer pair of hands, made it clear within moments of inheriting the mantle of Gladstone and Lloyd George that his party is not going to have a quiet life with him in charge. He chose to be blunt, and honest, rather than emollient: “The truth is voters don’t believe that the Liberal Democrats want to help ordinary people get on in life. Voters don’t believe we share their values. And voters don’t believe we are on the side of people like them...”

Accurate as that might be, it does beg some awkward questions. For if the Lib Dems’ values are so out of touch with modern Brexity Britain, does that mean that the party needs to change its values, or try to persuade at least some of the electorate to change their views? If the former, how far, then, will Sir Ed lead the Liberal Democrats away from their traditional but electorally unpromising core beliefs? It calls to mind the old quip made by Groucho Marx: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them... well, I have others”.

Perhaps, as usual with politics, he will do a bit of both. It is sometimes said by some in the party, if a little too smugly, that if the Liberal Democrats did not exist it would be necessary to invent them. There is truth in that. No other party has been so consistently pro-European. No other party has spoken up so bravely for the rights of refugees, and put the case for immigration and a multicultural society; nor defended other unpopular causes around civil liberties and minorities, as well as tedious ones such as constitutional reform. There is a role for such a party, and, as it happens, a constituency of support. Oddly, as politics moves from class to cultural fault lines the Liberal Democrats should be in a good position to engage on such novel battlegrounds, as a party that has always rejected class division and chosen to base its appeal on cultural values.

Of course taking the battle to Boris Johnson’s populist Conservative Party isn’t particularly difficult, and the divide between the two parties is stark. The Lib Dems’ extreme anti-Brexit stance at the last general election plainly alienated even those sympathetic to Remain and the People’s Vote movement. The question now is how pro-European this traditionally pro-European party should be. Should it advocate rejoining the EU at the earliest opportunity? On what terms? Would the UK join the euro? Dreaded question – would there be a referendum on British entry, or Brentry?

Sir Ed is also faced with the tricky dilemma of how to deal with Sir Keir. The Labour leader’s broadly liberal and social democratic outlook is close to Sir Ed’s, and, as when Tony Blair parked New Labour’s tanks on the centre ground in the 1990s, that shrinks the territory available to the Liberal Democrats. Sir Ed was an economic adviser to Paddy Ashdown during that awkward period, and observed how his party contented itself as the junior partner in an informal coalition against John Major’s government, concentrating on peeling away soft Tories not quite willing to switch to Labour, particularly in the home counties and southwest. He seems keen on reprising that approach in the years ahead, with no formal pacts or deals necessary or even desirable. At this point, it appears to be at least a practical medium-term strategy as the Tories sink into deep unpopularity after Covid and Brexit.

In other words, Sir Ed could quite easily double or treble the party’s current poll rating by simply making the most of the Johnson government’s capacity for calamitous incompetence. He should, by the same token, see his candidates begin to regain long-lost ground in local government, in the Welsh and Scottish parliaments and eventually at Westminster. The tarnish left by the coalition years will eventually wear away. Sir Ed need not delude anyone about forming the next government, as his hyperventilating predecessor Jo Swinson did so foolishly. Sir Ed can make progress enough in Sir Keir’s slipstream. All he really needs to do is to remind the voters that the Lib Dems are still around, and persuade at least some of the electorate that liberal values are ones we should all share.