This morning’s local elections launch was everything we have come to expect from the Liberal Democrats. In leafy Henley, Ed Davey galloped around on a hobby horse, while gamely activists lustily cheered him on. Infantile? Yes. But such tactics are effective too. Sir Ed is clearly happy to reprise his role as the Mr Tumble of British politics, having slid, paddle-boarded and bungee-jumped his way to 59 gains in England last July. These included 44 seats in the south – something Davey is keen to build on this time around. ‘These local elections are a chance for the Liberal Democrats to replace the Conservatives as the party of Middle England’, he told journalists today.
There are 20 Tory-run councils up for election in four weeks’ time. Oxfordshire, where the Lib Dems chose to hold their launch, is one of their key targets. Traditionally, the party would establish a power base by winning over wards, one by one. Next, they would take the council and then, finally, the parliamentary constituency. But after last year’s success – in which the Lib Dems won five of the seven Oxfordshire seats – the reverse trend seems true. Rather like Blitzkrieg, they have taken control of the seats and are now focused on eradicating remnants of local Tory opposition.
Davey and his aides believe they can now overtake the Conservatives in terms of the number of local authorities that they run. Currently his party has majority control of 37 councils, short of the 49 held by the Tories, across the UK. In the mid-1990s, at the height of John Major’s unpopularity, the Lib Dems did boast more councillors than the Tories – but they have never run so many authorities. This trend of gains across successive elections – from 2021 to date – suggests that ten years after they left government, the Lib Dems have finally laid the coalition ghost to bed.
Critics will jibe that today’s launch was vacuous. Yet Davey’s willingness to wear his philosophy lightly is precisely part of his appeal. As one Tory MP told me last week: ‘He has turned being inoffensive into an art form.’ Against Keir Starmer’s gloomy pessimism and the as-yet-unknown quantity of Kemi Badenoch, Davey has an attraction for voters crying out for stability. Head boy of his old (private) school, Davey’s currency is ‘respectability’ – something shared by his new MPs. Take Charlie Maynard, David Cameron’s successor in Witney. ‘A background in business, is centrist and practical in political outlook’, his website reads, blandly. Who could take issue with that?
Of course, it seems highly doubtful that the Lib Dems could ever truly overtake the Conservatives at Westminster. First-past-the-post encourages the existence of both a centre-right and centre-left party; regardless of Davey’s appeal to natural Tories, the party he leads is proudly progressive. But that will not stop the Lib Dems from trying. At last week’s spring conference, the main row was over candidate selection. The current system is a legacy of the pre-merger 1980s; many Lib Dems want a more centralised system to enable earlier MP selections for 2029. Should that happen, it will be another blow to Badenoch’s party as they seek to win back Middle England next time around.
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