The Liberal Democrats may have brought confetti canons to their manifesto launch, but they have still struggled to get as much attention today as they hoped, given Boris Johnson’s loose lips on the National Insurance threshold cut. They are also – by leader Jo Swinson’s own admission – suffering a squeeze in the polls.
The latest YouGov poll has the party on 15 per cent, trailing Labour which is on 30 per cent and the Tories on 42 per cent. Perhaps more worryingly, given the focus on Swinson herself, voters don’t seem to warm to her the more they find out about her. What’s going wrong?
One of the main problems might be that the party has miscalculated what its strongest selling points are. The campaign is heavily focused on two things: Swinson and the stop Brexit pledge. It is hard to move for massive pictures of the Lib Dem leader, whether on the battle bus or in party documents and today’s manifesto was branded ‘Jo Swinson’s plan for Britain’s future’.
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