As the Lib Dem faithful heads down to Brighton for the annual party conference, Sir Ed Davey faces questions over the party’s position in the polls and whether he’s getting through to voters
Thousands of Lib Dems will head to the south coast this weekend hoping for a rare moment to bask in the spotlight.
Behind the scenes, though, things are not all rosy in the orange camp. Leader Sir Ed Davey faces rumbles of discontent amid growing questions about the party’s direction. He will use the party’s annual conference in Brighton to try to inject some urgency with a new strategy to push forward.
He knows delegates and MPs will be asking why Britain’s traditional third party is currently languishing in fourth or fifth place, depending on which poll you read. With the government stuck in a doom loop until recently, the Tories and Reform scrapping like rats in a sack and the Green surge falling away, the Lib Dem faithful might well expect to be doing better.
Sir Ed’s famous stunts might make for fun pictures, but the party’s messages don’t seem to be cutting through, much to the frustration of his MPs. Wetsuits aside, the affable Lib Dem chief is calmness personified, going about his business in a measured way. But is this the right approach in 2026?
The numbers are worrying. When Britons are asked to describe the Lib Dem leader in their own words, 42% answer either “don’t know” or “who?”, with 25% giving at least one positive term and 35% at least one negative term.
Sir Ed himself can point to plenty of success during his tenure however – the Lib Dems have a record number of MPs and picked up an additional 133 council seats in May.
He said: “I think we’ve done pretty well. Even before the last election, we had those by-election wins, which no one saw coming, and we just kept winning by-elections and doing well in local government. Then we had the general election where we got our best result for 100 years. And then we keep gaining every May, we run way more councils than the Tories now, and have got strength in loads of parts of the country. I think that contrasts pretty well with some of our competitors and what they’ve been doing.”
One senior MP insisted the party was doing well, but that their successes were being drowned out by louder parties like Reform and the Greens. They explained: “There’s been some changes since the Spring, in terms of personnel behind the scenes and stuff, and things feel more positive than they did earlier this year.
“The local elections in May, we knew we were going to do better than we had done before, and it was the eighth time in a row we had made gains at local elections.”
Others said Sir Ed’s measured style – agreeing to work with the government on social care, for example – plays well with the public.
“There’s never been an era like this in history”, one MP said. “Now when you go on social media you see the usual suspects berating the Prime Minister or ministers so they can get dramatic clips.
“Ed isn’t like that, and nor is his team. He cares passionately about making a difference rather than putting on a show, but the cost of that is that it’s harder to cut through to voters.
“But ultimately what do people want from their politicians? Performance or substance? Maybe we need to look at where the balance lies.”
Lib Dem MP Alistair Carmichael claimed unease among MPs was normal, but that the polling still showed the party doing well. He said: “MPs grumble, it’s not new, I was the chief whip twice over six years in total, and it’s what they do. I would not get too excited about that.
“We are in that spot where we are sort of in the midterm doldrums, and the polls aren’t really shifting at a national level, but if you look at the MRPs, by and large it still sees us holding most of our seats. It’s not the growth we want to see, but we’ve had a worse prognosis at this stage than these.”
The Orkney and Shetland MP did suggest the party could be bolder in its offering though. “We’ve been a little bit cautious sometimes, the Lib Dem thing of just overthinking things so we are occasionally more inclined to follow polls rather than tell people what we think,” he said.
“Ed’s leadership is in a place where he’s generally well regarded, well respected, but there is an appetite from the wide public and in the party to hear a bit more. Get out there, tell people what we stand for as a party, become less concerned with what we don’t stand for. That space is open to us, but nobody is going to fill it for us.”
At last year’s conference, Sir Ed made it clear his party was coming for the Tories. Rather than trying to outflank Labour on the left, the Lib Dems had their sights set on moderate Conservatives who feel left behind by Kemi Badenoch’s shift to the right.
But some question whether that is the right approach. One Lib Dem MP said: “I can tell you a lot of MPs aren’t happy, and they hate the stunts, oh do we hate the stunts.
“It was fine a few years ago, but people want serious help on serious issues – the public are fed up with it. Under Keir Starmer we had a huge opportunity, there is a huge space on the left, but where are we? It’s been taken by the Greens, and nobody could say what the main issue the Lib Dems are campaigning on”.
And therein lies Sir Ed’s problem. He needs to make sure that when supporters check out of their hotels and head back home after the three-day shindig in Brighton, they are clear in their minds what the party is fighting for.