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Strange times indeed. The Labour government is imploding with a leader who looks like a dead man walking and recent (January 23rd Politico Poll of Polls) support at 18%. The Conservatives are directionless and leaking influential members, with support equal to Labour at 18%. Reform is out in front on 29%, while the Greens and LibDems are on 14% and 13%, respectively.
All the main party leaders have support in negative figures, according to The Times of January 26th, with Green leader Polanski on -6% just ahead of Ed Davey on -8%.
After the surprising success of the LibDems at the last election, the party has stalled and slumped to near invisibility in the public consciousness. Matthew Parris, again in The Times summed up the party thus:
And we have the Liberal Democrats. Perhaps you’d forgotten them? Seventy-two — yes, 72 — MPs and absolutely no impact. No profile, no policies anyone can remember and no tough response to the tough problems government faces, led by a politician, Sir Ed Davey, who falls so far below the level of the leadership an insurgent centre party needs that it’s baffling he largely escapes criticism because (they say) he’s “a nice man”. Which indeed he is: more than nice, privately heroic, but political jelly.
A savage criticism, but accurate. Ed does his best, but the harsh truth is that he would not have become leader if the party had more candidates to choose from at the time. Now that it has, where are our MPs with charisma, personality and the nose for a good story that needs exposure? Where are the ones who can cultivate journalists and get a sound bite into breaking news to give the party’s perspective? There must be some, surely?
Seventy-two MPs have now had over a year to make an impact. The fact that nobody has, might suggest that our candidate selection process is wanting. Are we so keen to ensure that all our candidates fit a uniform, homogenous mould, that anyone with a spark of originality or imagination is ruled out in case they go off message? I don’t know, but I’m beginning to wonder.
For my whole life, the Liberals and the Liberal Democrats have blamed the media for the party’s invisibility outside election periods. We have to make our own weather by delivering our own leaflets and raising our local profile where we can. This is undoubtedly true, but in the days of Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy we had a national profile as well.
Yes, we have seventy-two MPs, but the party and the Westminster bubble should remember that we were only this successful because Reform and the Conservative Party split the centre-right vote, which allowed more MPs from other parties to break through. It’s a mirror image of the usual picture and may not apply next time. The party now has three years left to make an impact – and possibly for a new leader to galvanise public support. Politics is crowded as never before. If we fail, we could easily return to the days when the parliamentary party could travel together in the same taxi. And no one would remember the seventy-two.
