‘Lib Dem chief’s foolish stunts repay – and the Tories ought to be anxious’

One of the best jokes ever came from Bob Monkhouse: “When I first said I wanted to be a comedian, everybody laughed. Well, they’re not laughing now.”

Lib Dem leader Ed Davey may be tempted to nick it. During the general election, everyone laughed at his silly stunts. They are not laughing now his party has won 72 seats – its best result since 1923.

There will be plenty of jokes at this week’s Lib Dem party conference in Brighton but they will be at the expense of the Tories, not the bungee-jumping, paddle-boarding, water-sliding Mr Davey.

In keeping with the pantomime spirit, they will be tempted to shout “behind you” at the Conservatives. Tory leadership race candidates are fixated on the threat from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, oblivious to the real danger from the Lib Dems.

At the election the Lib Dems took 59 seats from the Tories, including four Cabinet ministers’ scalps. As an added bonus, they also nabbed David Cameron’s former constituency of Witney and Theresa May’s former bastion of Maidenhead.

And they will not give up these gains easily.

If the Lib Dems have a specialism, it is their ability to win local council seats and then use their network of grassroots activists to dig in. They are the Japanese knotweed of political parties, only harder to remove. The talk in Brighton this week will be whether they can usurp the Conservatives at the next general election to become the official opposition.

Some will see this another far-fetched aspiration from a party with a history of hubris.

Members still cringe when reminded of Sir David Steel telling the faithful in 1981 to “go back to your constituencies and prepare for government”. They’re equally embarrassed by the memory of leader Jo Swinson’s 2019 claim she could be the next PM, only for her to lose her seat as the party was flattened by the Boris Johnson steamroller.

Is talk of the Lib Dems becoming the second largest party just as deluded? There is an argument that if the Tories move further to the right and Labour continues to alienate voters then there is a path through the middle – a yellow brick road if you like – for Davey’s yellow-clad army. But the path ahead is strewn with obstacles.

The main problem for Lib Dems is that taking more seats from the Tories will require the party moving further to the right; tricky when the rank-and-file leans to the left.

The more ambitious Davey gets, the more he risks exposing Lib Dem divisions. By trying to appeal to disgruntled Labour voters and disaffected Tory ones, they could easily end up appealing to neither. And that would be no laughing matter.