Who wins when everyone is in crisis?

Britain’s three main political parties are in crisis. That isn’t meant to happen. If only by a process of elimination, one of the three UK-wide political parties should be doing well at any given moment. These simultaneous crises are one of the things that is making politics so volatile.

Let’s start with the Liberal Democrats. The political circumstances seem almost perfect for them but their failure to even break into the teens in the polls when the two main parties are both in crisis does makes one question whether they can ever return to the levels of popularity they enjoyed before the ill-fated coalition with the Conservatives.

What compounds their failure to break through is that both Labour and the Tories are being accused by their own MPs of abandoning the liberal centre. This alone should create the ideal conditions for a Lib Dem revival. Add to that Brexit. The Liberal Democrats are the only one of three major parties in favour of a second referendum — a position that a plurality of voters now support.