The Lib Dems are on to a vote winner with their plan to crack down on yobs who blare out music on public transport. The party wants to change the law to explicitly ban playing music and videos out loud on trains and buses in England. As an almost daily user of London’s public transport network, there is little that enrages me more than those who decide we all need to hear the music they’re listening to, the video they’re watching or the phone conversation they’re having. Ed Davey’s party says it will hit these headphone dodgers with a £1,000 fine. It’s the perfect attention-grabbing Lib Dem gimmick – one that will strike a chord with voters and get out the vote in this year’s local elections.
The Lib Dems are heading to the polls in positive spirits
In total, 14 county councils, eight unitary authorities, the Doncaster metropolitan district and a host of mayoralties are up for grabs on Thursday. Some of these, like Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire and Hertfordshire, are of particular interest to the Lib Dems, a party that has adopted an increasingly ruthless targeting strategy.
The Lib Dems are heading to the polls in positive spirits. One of the party’s MPs, who has spent much of the last few weeks out on the campaign trail, tells me why he thinks the party has good reason to be optimistic: “Labour support is evaporating…the Tories feel almost irrelevant..(and) Reform seem to be doing well, but are chaotic and fairly ineffective in their organisation…”
A key area of interest is Kent, where the Lib Dems are finally making a breakthrough. For decades, the Garden of England has been an impenetrable Conservative stronghold. In the 2021 County Council Elections, the Tories picked up 49 per cent of the vote, winning 61 seats. Back then, the Lib Dems were the second party with just six councillors. But at last year’s election, the Lib Dems snatched the none-more-Tory seat of Tunbridge Wells. The MP for the constituency, Mike Martin, insists that “Kent is a microcosm of the whole country”.
He explains “that Reform are going to do really well in East Kent, places like Thanet and Dover and Deal, and all those sorts of places, and the Lib Dems are going to do really well in West Kent”. In short, he means the posh bits.
Martin believes that there is a real possibility that Kent County Council could move to No Overall Control after Thursday’s elections, even if MRP Polling from March suggested the council might move to Reform control.
But that same polling indicates that the Lib Dems could be in for a good night on Thursday. It predicts the party could go from a total of 274 councillors to over 400. Even the Lib Dems’s opponents concede that the party is good at local politics.
Kemi Badenoch herself told Jordan Peterson on his podcast that the “typical” Lib Dem is someone who “fixed the church roof”. The Tory leader intended to be dismissive, but you could practically hear the Lib Dem press office cheering when they heard the quote. There is little that party activists and elected officials enjoy more than posing for a photograph while pointing at a pothole. They hope to reap the rewards of this work come polling day.
“Responses on the doorstep all around the country all seem pretty positive,” Lord Mark Pack, the Lib Dem president tells me. “Omens are good for extending our run of gaining seats in every round of local elections in the last Parliament”
Davey’s campaigning antics generated plenty of attention at the 2024 General Election. They have not calmed down since: he’s been spotted on swan boats, diggers and teacups during this campaign. Will these stunts propel Sir Ed’s party colleagues into council chambers across the country?
I’m sceptical about how far such behaviour can take the Lib Dems. But even if it’s about time Davey grew up a bit, most activists are behind him. Mike Martin is also on board: “When you do those big eye-catching visuals, then you then talk about your policy. And that’s worked consistently really well for us.”
It has worked, but that may be as much down to the sheer ineptitude of the Lib Dems’ opponents as it is their own campaigning brilliance. Either way, those in the party seem confident that we’re going to see lots of happy people wearing yellow rosettes as the results come in this week.
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