Lib dem

The Lib Dems have had a much more enjoyable campaign than their rivals. Sir Ed Davey has been splishing and splashing all over the country. On Monday he jumped off a crane attached to a bungee cord while imploring people to ‘do something you’ve never done before: vote Liberal Democrat!’ A few days before he was at a theme park. We will see in the early hours of Friday morning if his stunts have paid off. We can see where the Lib Dems’ comfort zone is, and the party still retreats there when it can It hasn’t all been bungee jumping and rollercoasters. Alongside all that, the Lib Dems have remained

Sir Ed Davey kicked off manifesto week by launching his party’s document this afternoon in East London. In true Lib Dem style, it is a weighty tome of 114 pages – the product of months of painstaking care by party strategists. Their task was to reconcile the desires of the activist base with the demands of Tory voters that the leadership is trying to woo across the South of England. ‘We are a genuine party democracy – sadly’, joked one of Davey’s aides to me at last year’s conference. That tradition means that, unlike the Conservatives, the Lib Dem document cannot be cooked up in a matter of weeks and

It’s four days since Rishi Sunak surprised his colleagues and announced a summer election. So far a lot of the commentary has been on how Labour’s Keir Starmer could be the big winner from that call – with the party over 20 points ahead in the polls. Yet when it comes to the threat many of the cabinet are most worried about, it is actually the Liberal Democrats. There is much chatter among ministers today over Michael Gove’s shock decision to stand down. As Tim Shipman reports in the Sunday Times, Gove was long of the view that he would hold his constituency of Surrey Heath (majority: 18,349) so long