Lib Dem MPs Seek To Define Party's Identity In The "Gaps" Left By Labour And Tories
Leader Ed Davey gave his speech to Lib Dem conference on Tuesday (Alamy)
9 min read
Thousands of activists gathered in Brighton to celebrate the Liberal Democrats’ record success in the General Election, but the question of what comes next was already on everyone’s lips.
Leader Ed Davey gave his speech on the final day with all 72 MPs – plus MP Steve Darling’s beloved guide dog Jennie – gathered behind him on stage, the vast majority of whom had gained seats from the Conservatives.
“We are just so happy!” one enthusiastic party member told PoliticsHome late on Sunday night. However, behind the triumphant atmosphere, MPs and party strategists were considering how they should build on their success as the largest third party in more than 100 years.
“We're going to try and be a better opposition than the Conservative Party,” a Lib Dem spokesperson told reporters at conference, explaining that they wanted to stand for values that used to be associated with the Tories – “decency, compassion, the rule of law” – with the intention of taking further seats from the Conservatives at the next election.
However, with Keir Starmer’s Labour Party now in government, the party now faces a challenge around defining its identity. Is it the party of rural Britain, or of "Gail's Bakery" towns and cities? Can it take over from the Conservatives as the party of business, and more to the point: does it want to?
And while the party might be in opposition, many MPs told PoliticsHome that rather than fundamentally opposing Labour’s ideological agenda, they wanted to push the Government to go further with many of their major policy areas. Some Lib Dem MPs even expressed their enthusiasm for Keir Starmer as prime minister, despite their party coming to blows with the Government in recent weeks over the cut to the universal winter fuel allowance for pensioners.
Sarah Gibson, the new MP for Chippenham and the party's business spokesperson, told PoliticsHome: “I'm extremely happy to see Keir Starmer there, partly because the previous government was so dreadful.
“I just like to see competent people running a country, and people whose interests are clearly that of the country and of the community, whereas I really didn't feel that the last Conservative government had any interests except their own and I certainly didn't feel they were competent.”
Gibson described her constituency as “Conservative-facing” and said she hoped to stand for “strong community, supporting our local businesses, and making sure that our local health service works for us”.
Multiple other new Lib Dem MPs told PoliticsHome they were “happy” to have a Labour government, while longer-serving MPs also admitted they were ideologically closer to the current Labour administration than to the Conservatives.
Sarah Olney, Lib Dem MP for Richmond Park and party spokesperson for the Cabinet Office, said she was “delighted” to see the back of the Conservative government and said there were “a lot of things where we share a similar set of values” with Labour.
“So something like climate change, for example, there's going to be an awful lot of overlap between Liberal Democrats and Labour,” she told PoliticsHome.
“The Tories are increasingly going on this whole net zero is too expensive line, they're kind of moving away from that agenda.
“We're not going to be having a go at Labour for their ideological commitments, we're not going to make political capital out of differences in approach to the NHS. We are simply going to be asking them constantly to keep moving forward in terms of fixing the problems that need fixing.”
Another senior Lib Dem MP said Starmer “is a person who absolutely does think about right and wrong quite a lot” which he had demonstrated through his “track record as a lawyer” and the fact that he had “so little time for Boris Johnson”.
They added that being a “constructive opposition” would mean the Lib Dems would have to “choose their moments” to criticise the Government and not “just be beastly” to them.
Multiple senior Lib Dems admitted that their strategy going forwards would be to fill the “gaps” left by both Labour and the Conservatives. The increased presence of business and charity lobbyists at this year’s conference seemed to indicate that stakeholders hope this will be the case too.
“There are lots and lots and lots of business delegates, way more than we had last year,” Olney said, speaking to PoliticsHome before the party hosted a ‘business day’ on Monday.
She said business groups were hoping to see some cross-party consensus between the Lib Dems and Labour. “We haven't had that in such a long time, because both Labour and Tories have been busy amusing themselves and not really addressing the critical issues.”
Lib Dem MPs told PoliticsHome they had received a lot of interest from businesses at conference this year (Alamy)
One senior Lib Dem told PoliticsHome that external stakeholders “think Labour is more likely to listen to us and take practical suggestions from us than they would the Tories”. In the middle of this conversation, a Ukrainian MP approached the Lib Dem MP and said she would be keen to have further conversations about what the British Government should be doing to support Ukraine, outlining her concern that the UK Government should be pressed to deliver on its promises.
Another Lib Dem MP said stakeholders in the foreign affairs and defence space saw the Liberal Democrats as being able to listen “in the middle” and acting as “defenders of democracy”. They added that the business and public affairs presence made this year’s conference feel “similar to the coalition era”.
However, a senior Lib Dem told PoliticsHome that they had advised new Lib Dem MPs to not “waste” too much time “getting lobbied” and to instead focus on delivering for their constituencies.
Regardless, the business presence at conference has spurred on senior figures in the party who believe they can ensure the Tories do not "dominate the opposition space".
Alistair Carmichael, the MP for Orkney and Shetland and the new chair of the Environment and Rural Affairs Select Committee, told PoliticsHome that the party had to “get away from this idea that in one fell swoop we will be in government” and instead focus on the issues which were being neglected by the other parties.
“There's a gap in the market – a Lib Dem sized gap in the market – for a party that cares about the environment, farming and will articulate the frustrations of rural Britain,” he said.
In Gibson’s view, the Lib Dems have a “very strong identity” of their own and put criticisms of the party’s centrist position down to “simple, populist messages” being easier to communicate.
“It's always easy to be an extremist, because if you shout loudly, it's a very simple populist message,” she said.
"The sort of Trump-type message is easy to communicate, and something that is more sensible and solid can be a little more difficult to communicate.”
She agreed with Carmichael that the Lib Dems would particularly stand up for rural communities, arguing that they were best placed to navigate the “balancing act” of increasing renewable energy in rural areas.
However, other Lib Dems think the moment has come for the party to start ambitiously targeting more urban areas and take seats from both the Conservatives and Labour. As they have already won many of the seats where they were previously in second place, the party faces a challenge as to whether it can increase its list of potential target seats, or whether it has already hit its upper ceiling.
Ben Maguire, the new MP for North Cornwall, said “no seats are off limits for us now”.
“Certainly, I don’t think there will be any seats we shouldn’t be looking at, particularly in the north of England, there are definitely seats there we should be going after,” he said.
“We're not just going to be a critical friend to Labour, we are going to go after them now as well. That's the opportunity we have ahead of us if we can seize it.”
Another new Lib Dem MP said he had been encouraging the party for many months to start shifting tack towards more urban, younger voters – particularly in some areas where the party has started to see its local support growing, such as Hull, Sunderland, and parts of Greater Manchester and Greater London.
A senior Lib Dem suggested that the eventual aim could be to occupy the centre ground entirely and wipe the Conservatives off the map: “We’re not definitely going to replace the Tory party, and we’re not definitely not going to…"
The local elections next year will be a key moment for the party to see where its next target seats might develop. Under the direction of Dave McCobb, their Director of Field Campaigns since 2020, the party has taken a ‘bottom-up’ election strategy approach, building up local grassroots support first, gaining councillors and then getting MPs elected.
“A lot of the areas that are coming up at county elections next May are areas where we now have MPs,” a party spokesperson said.
“We have a chance to run those councils. We've done really well at the district council level across lots of these areas in the previous years, but now we want to take over some of those counties as well.”
Looking ahead to these local elections and further to the next general election, the Lib Dems are carrying out a review of the last general election, which will be chaired by former leader Tim Farron and is set to be published by the end of this year.
While their record number of MPs is cause for celebration among members, party figures have admitted their chances of becoming the main "constructive opposition" seem to hinge on both the direction the Conservative Party takes in the coming years and whether they can stay relevant when Labour has such a huge majority – meaning the Government is unlikely to need Lib Dem support to get legislation through Parliament.
The Lib Dems surprised even themselves with their success this year in helping to get the Tories out. Now, their challenge is to find a new identity and – as Farron put it himself – make their "own luck" in the political arena.
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