Politics Home Article | Lib Dems Go Soul Searching In Brighton

Lib Dem leader Ed Davey with party president Josh Babarinde and deputy leader Daisy Cooper at the party conference in Brighton (Alamy)

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As Lib Dem parliamentarians and activists arrived on the south coast at the weekend, they were encouraged to write on a board why they support the party.

“I want to live in a country where every voice and every vote matters.” “Fairness and equality of opportunity.” “I didn’t want to stand by and see our country overtaken by malign actors.” “Honesty, decency, integrity and progressivism.” “Because it doesn’t need to be this shit.”

The range of answers reflected a growing debate within the Lib Dems that was the biggest talking point in Brighton: what, and who, are they for?

The question was putting pressure on leader Ed Davey in the weeks, even months, leading up to the weekend.

On the eve of conference, South Cotswolds MP Roz Savage said publicly what many Lib Dems had been complaining about in private: that their party is “struggling for relevance”. In an essay shared exclusively with PoliticsHome, Savage argued that liberals must “rediscover” their “insurgent spirit”, rather than being “the polite custodians of a system that leaves people feeling powerless”.

Indeed, as Lib Dem direction comes under growing scrutiny, senior party figures told PoliticsHome they had noticed more media attention than they would normally expect at this stage of a Parliament.

Davey has made no secret of his desire to see the Liberal Democrats enter government after the next general election, telling The House in a recent interview that he would be “the most experienced leader” in the event of a hung parliament. 

Faced with criticism, he has pointed to the party’s electoral gains at local level as evidence of success. “We’re winning where it matters: at the ballot box,” he declared in Brighton.

Having won a record 72 MPs in the 2024 general election, the Lib Dems transformed their presence in Westminster. However, in recent months, multiple party figures have expressed frustration with what they describe as failure to capitalise on this success and stagnant polling, and fear that the Lib Dems are failing to cut through in a fragmented political climate. 

Speaking to PoliticsHome at conference, one MP blamed “growing pains”: a Lib Dem central operation that had taken time to catch up with the size of the parliamentary party.

Another MP described this year’s conference as “edgier” than previous years, adding that restlessness with Davey’s leadership was leading to conversations about possible successors: “This one feels edgier about the leadership… The three who would go for it are Lisa Smart, Daisy Cooper and Max Wilkinson. Whether they’d do any better, I don’t know.”

Cooper, the party’s deputy leader, is generally seen as the most obvious potential successor to Davey. She was once widely seen as the natural heir, although that assumption has faded somewhat over the past two years as 2024-intake MPs like Wilkinson, Calum Miller and Josh Babarinde have risen through the ranks.

Babarinde has recently taken on the presidency of the Liberal Democrats for a three-year term, and the expectation among colleagues is that he will see that role through before considering a leadership bid – following a path similar to that taken by former leader Tim Farron.

Smart, who is a close ally of Davey, is seen as a potential continuity candidate, while Miller and Wilkinson are widely viewed as highly competent spokespeople for the party. However, MPs worry that if a leadership change were to happen now, any potential successor would struggle to achieve the same name recognition with the public that Davey has earned through years of campaigning and media stunts. 

Furthermore, while there was chat about Davey’s successor in Brighton, few party figures believe a change in leadership anytime soon is a serious possibility.

While some Lib Dem MPs privately acknowledge frustrations with the party’s progress since the election, many remain relatively comfortable when looking at polling in their own constituencies, which are largely based in former-Conservative voting parts of southern England. An MRP poll carried out by Electoral Calculus in June this year shows the Lib Dems holding steady with 72 seats.

“It’s just not that deep,” one Lib Dem MP joked, arguing that some of the Lib Dem MPs most critical of Davey also “do not have an alternative” to offer.

there is an absence of underlying understanding publicly as to what the party’s purpose is

For now, the party is attempting to project unity and purpose rather than succession politics. Victoria Collins, the MP for Harrow West, described the mood of conference as one of preparation for government.

“The general tone is that we are ambitious, we are going for government, whatever that looks like, and we’re preparing for it,” she said. 

That said, while Davey’s position is still regarded as secure, he is undoubtedly under pressure to clarify the party’s message beyond the so-called “blue wall” seats won at the last election.

In his conference speech on Tuesday, he made a moral case for the Lib Dems, telling the party that it is in a fight for the country’s future against the modern-day far right.

At a panel organised by the Social Liberal Forum (SLF), the SLF chair John Shreeve argued that the Liberal Democrats had become effective campaigners in areas where they already possessed capacity, but struggled to expand that model elsewhere.

“The conclusion that we reach is that there is an absence of underlying understanding publicly as to what the party’s purpose is,” he said. 

“So, are we the best administrators? Well, that’s not going to exactly put us in power. It’s the scale of our delivery which is inadequate. We’re very good at delivering where we have the capacity to do so, but we are very poor at being able to stimulate and lead and inspire.”

Graham Neale, chair of the Green Liberals, agreed. 

“We end up, unfortunately, being sort of just populist bureaucrats,” he said at the panel event.

“‘We can get more for your council tax than this group can, or we would spend it better than that group can…’ We just end up competing to see who can be the best bureaucrats. We’ve really got a series of disconnected ideas here.”

He accused the party of being “timid” on environmental policy, taxation, and its international stance, especially around Gaza.

“We didn’t reap any benefit from our international stance in the way that the Green Party did in Southwark and other places in London.”

Other urban Lib Dems continue to feel that the party remains disproportionately focused on former Conservative territory rather than trying to make progress in some of England’s biggest cities.

Northern Lib Dems in particular are dissatisfied that the party has not done enough to address what they see as a north-south imbalance. One Manchester councillor told PoliticsHome that they had recently invited Davey to an event in the city, but that the leader declined to attend: “He doesn’t care about Manchester.”

The acknowledgement that the lack of cut-through was an issue was probably the most significant first step

Other groups have gripes with the party’s approach. Young Liberals chair Will Tennison argued that the party’s focus on the European Union was misplaced when it comes to winning over younger voters. 

“They’re bored of it,” he said. “It went on too long. We’re ready to move on… The job market almost always comes out on top.”

Tennison, who sits on the party’s federal board, said the party is “aware that the messaging is not up to scratch”. 

“I don’t think they’ve come up with a solution to how to fix it, but I do think it’s really good that we’ve seen an increase in the number of people at HQ that are working in the digital space. So we’ve got more social media admins, we’ve got more people doing influencer stuff. Politics isn’t won on the BBC News anymore, and in the not too distant future, it might very well be won on TikTok.”

One MP said that the party’s problem lies less in the core policies themselves – fixing the social care system, repairing the UK’s relationship with Europe and electoral reform – but more in the communication of how they would actually directly improve people’s lives.

Earlier this year, PoliticsHome reported on a “strategy rethink” inside the party, amid frustration from some MPs about the lack of progress since the general election in breaking into new ground. 

The party has responded to criticisms by overhauling its communications operation, including the appointment of James Holt as political director. Holt previously served as the Liberal Democrats’ director of communications more than 10 years ago, and has returned to the UK in the last few months after working for Prince Harry and Meghan in the US.

“The acknowledgement that the lack of cut-through was an issue was probably the most significant first step,” one MP said.

“Now we’ve got people in place who should be able to help communicate and structure our vision. They won’t be able to do it overnight, but a year ago, there wasn’t even anyone working on it.”

The party has also hired content creators, reflecting a recognition that political communication is increasingly taking place away from traditional media.

There is also a new effort to develop the intellectual infrastructure behind the party.

The Britain Project, a new think tank aiming to “convene and catalyse liberal thinking”, was launched at the conference. Davey welcomed its arrival, arguing that liberalism had lacked a dedicated Westminster think tank for too long.

“There’s been a gap in the market. There hasn’t been a liberal think tank for a long time,” he said.

“You look around Westminster and Whitehall, and there are lots of think tanks there that are supplying ideas for Labour, ideas for the Conservatives, ideas that they try to promote so that they can get policies for government. The fact that we haven’t had a think tank focused on liberalism, sharing our values, has been a real gap.”

But Davey also insisted that the organisation should not simply become a policy arm of the party.

“While we share those values, we need you to come up with ideas that I occasionally disagree with, because we need you to challenge not just me, but challenge the whole party.

“When you do come up with ideas – whether we agree with them or not – the fact that we can add them to our debate, that they can challenge us, challenge the party, is a really good thing, because that challenge, as we know, as liberals, makes those ideas better.”

If you are as close to power as we may be, you need to be serious about it

The think tank’s policy director, Lib Dem peer Lord Leunig, went further, saying his ambition was to become unpopular within his own party if that was what was required to improve its policymaking.

“My ambition is to be the least popular person in our party,” he said.

“But to be a good minister you actually have to have policies that work, and I can tell you that our party, just like all other parties… can be guilty of ‘convenientism’ – believing that what can be convenient is true – and I tell you that is not always the case.”

He later added: “We are not soft people. This is serious stuff. Because you know what? If you are as close to power as we may be, you need to be serious about it.”

Davey has hinted at a willingness to work with Labour. He has refused to completely rule out a coalition with the Conservatives, but suggested that a coalition with the Tory party in its current form under the leadership of Kemi Badenoch would be highly unlikely. One senior Lib Dem told PoliticsHome the party would never consider joining a government that wanted to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

The MP suggested that, if coalition negotiations did eventually arise, the party should publicly identify three issues on which it would refuse to compromise: energy policy, Europe and electoral reform.

The Lib Dems feel confident that they will be a significant player come the next general election – whether it happens at the expected time or if Burnham calls an election early. 

However, their own activists and MPs are still embroiled in debates about what the party’s broader purpose should be, who it should speak to, and how it can translate a collection of familiar liberal causes into a proposition that voters across the country can understand.

The SLF panellists were asked to sum up what the Lib Dems were for in just a few words. Chris Bowers, coordinator of the Yorkists group, was the only panellist to offer an answer, which placed the Lib Dems in contrast with the other political parties on the ballot box.

“We’re better than this.”