Liberal democrats

What threat do the Liberal Democrats pose to the Conservatives? Two years ago, this question could have been brushed aside as someone trying to cause mischief. In the 2015 election, the Lib Dems lost 49 seats, a result ‘immeasurably more crushing and unkind’ than expected. At PMQs last year, Theresa May mocked Tim Farron’s plight as she jeered that her party is ‘a little bit bigger than his is’ — at 330 MPs to nine. However, the EU referendum result has seen a change in fortunes for Farron’s once beleaguered party. As the largest — and loudest — unashamedly pro-EU party, the Lib Dems have been cleaning up of late in by-elections

In normal times, by-elections are bad for governing parties and good for oppositions. But it is an indicator of how much trouble Labour is in, as I say in The Sun this morning, that they are the ones who are nervous ahead of Thursday’s by-elections. Some in the Labour machine seem almost resigned to losing Copeland to the Tories and are concentrating on trying to hold off Ukip in Stoke. Given that Labour is polling as low as 24% and Jeremy Corbyn’s ratings are worse than Michael Foot’s were at this point in his leadership, and the epic defeat Foot led Labour to in 1983 paved the way for 14

Today should have been a good PMQs for Jeremy Corbyn. He had the chance to denounce Donald Trump and embarrass Theresa May over his actions, as Prime Minister she is—obviously—constrained in what she can say about the US president. But May had come well prepared and ended up besting Corbyn. She hit at his fundamental weakness, when she declared ‘he can lead a protest, I’m leading the country’. Perhaps, the most substantive moment of the session came when Corbyn asked for a guarantee that the NHS wouldn’t be opened up to US companies as part of a US / UK trade deal. May replied, ‘The NHS is not for sale’.

Perversity is a much undervalued British trait, much more redolent of our real psyche than queuing, drinking tea or being tolerant of foreigners and homosexuals — all things for which we are better renowned. Seeing Dunkirk as a victory was magnificently perverse. So, too, was electing a Labour government in 2005 shortly after we had invaded a sovereign country and created a civil war. For ‘perversity’ I suppose you could read ‘complexity’, although the two often amount to the same thing. Our reactions to stuff are never as straightforward as they should be — they are complex and therefore can seem perverse. And so it is right now. For three

Sleaford wasn’t terribly good for Labour, was it? Nor indeed Richmond Park. Sleaford was never very Labour friendly – although, even given that, the party’s performance was staggeringly abject. Richmond has not been historically Labour-friendly – but given its current trajectory, towards the achingly liberal and affluent London upper class, you might have expected a better performance than the one they turned in (with an excellent candidate, incidentally, in Christian Wolmar). It has long been a given that Labour will lose vast numbers of seats in the north of England (and the midlands), in a similar fashion to its capitulation, north of the border, to the SNP. But now the

During the coalition years, Lib Dem conferences were well-attended events with many businesses, too, opting to exhibit. However, since the party went from 57 seats to eight in the 2015 general election, they have struggled to maintain their allure. So, perhaps brains at Lib Dem HQ can be forgiven for attempting to capitalise on Sarah Olney winning the Richmond Park by-election. The party is now marketing its upcoming Spring Conference with the line: ‘Come and Meet our New MP’. Alas Mr S suspects it may take more than one new MP to put the party back on the map.

Want proof of how bad things are for Labour? Jeremy Corbyn and his disastrous leadership is not even its biggest problem anymore. I write in The Sun that Labour’s biggest problem, and it is potentially an existential one, is that its reaction to the Brexit vote is threatening to make it a political irrelevance More than 60 percent of Labour seats voted to leave the EU. In these constituencies, being the party that is trying to block Brexit would be electoral suicide. That’s why the Labour leadership felt compelled to accept the government’s amendment this week saying Theresa May should start the formal, two-year process for leaving the EU by

Sarah Olney’s honeymoon period as the newly elected MP for Richmond Park has come to an abrupt end. Hours after ousting Zac Goldsmith from the seat, the Liberal Democrat appeared on Talk Radio to give an interview to Julia Hartley-Brewer about her victory. Alas things didn’t get off to the best start when Hartley-Brewer began by asking ‘when’s the second by-election’ — in a thinly-veiled dig at the Lib Dems’ call for a second referendum on the EU. In this vein, Hartley Brewer suggested that the people of Richmond Park might not have known what they were really voting for: JHB: When is the second by-election going to be held? SO: What do

Is there anything more absurd than hearing a bunch of Remainers claiming that they have achieved a great victory for Parliamentary democracy in today’s High Court ruling that Parliament should vote on the exercise of Article 50, beginning Britain’s exit from the EU? Parliament voted for a referendum, in which the British people voted to leave the EU. All that today’s judgement does is frustrate that process. As I wrote last week over Heathrow, the judicial review system is fast-turning Britain into a Krytocracy, in which judges wield the real power. All that said, why is the government bothering to fight the judgement? If the Remainers want more Parliamentary democracy,

After Zac Goldsmith’s decision to step down as an MP and trigger a by-election in Richmond Park, the Liberal Democrats are excited. They’re getting hot under their collars because they think they can snatch back a seat they lost to the Tories in 2010 and add to their lowly tally of eight MPs. A new poll out today suggests their chances don’t look good: the BMG phone survey puts Zac 27 points ahead of his Lib Dem rival Sarah Olney in the upcoming election. But is it really safe to write off the Lib Dems’ chances so easily? The party is, against all the odds, enjoying something of a resurgence of late: membership is

Zac Goldsmith has announced this evening that he’ll be standing as an independent in the Richmond Park by-election he has triggered over Heathrow expansion. The Tories don’t seem too alarmed and will not be fielding a candidate against him. This means that the by-election will turn into a fight between Goldsmith and the Liberal Democrats (who held the seat until 2010). Goldsmith says he is asking his constituents to give him a mandate to continue his fight against Heathrow and that he wants the by-election to be a referendum on a third runway. But the Liberal Democrats will try and turn it into a vote on Brexit. Lib Dems can point

Since Nigel Farage’s latest resignation as Ukip leader, it has become clear that he is the only person who can hold the party together. Without him, Ukip has become a seemingly endless brawl between various hostile factions. Still, this leaderless mess has more supporters than the Liberal Democrats. That’s because Ukip, for all its flaws, has given a voice to those ignored in an overly centrist political debate — first Eurosceptic Tories, then working-class Labour voters. With decent leadership, Ukip could still do to the Labour party in the north of England what the SNP has done to it in Scotland. Steven Woolfe might have been able to supply that

It’s no surprise that the Tories held their seat overnight in the Witney by-election. Yet what seems remarkable (at least on the face of it) is the extent of the swing back towards the Lib Dems. The party saw its share of the vote jump from seven per cent two years ago to nearly a third of the vote this time around. That pushed the party’s candidate, Liz Leffman, into second place and has got Tim Farron excited. The Lib Dem leader went as far as saying the result shows the ‘Liberal Democrats are back in the political big time’. That’s not quite the case yet. After all, this is

Perhaps it’s age, perhaps disillusion, or perhaps party conferences really aren’t what they used to be, but I have struggled this autumn against something that has seemed to be carrying me away. As with a swimmer drawn from the shore by a strong current he cannot see, I’m trying not to leave but the people on the beach seem to be getting smaller, and the holiday noise, the shouts and laughter, grows faint. I knew my duty on arriving on the south coast for the Liberal Democrats’ annual gathering. It was to sit through conference debates in the vile windowless warehouse that is the Brighton Centre, scarring the waterfront with

Tim Farron’s hardest task in his conference speech today was convincing people to actually listen. A test of how successful he was will be how soon into the 6pm news tonight he pops up on screen (following Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s reported split, the signs don’t look good). So what did Farron do to try and get people to sit up? Banging the anti-Brexit drum was one of his main tactics. Farron promised… ‘Not a re-run of the referendum, not a second referendum, but a referendum on the terms of the as-yet-unknown Brexit deal’ The Lib Dem leader did, to be fair, do his best to empathise with those who

Talking to Labour MP these days is a pretty miserable business, to the extent that many journalists are starting to wonder if they should charge by the hour for counselling. Among their many moans is that there no longer seems to be a centre-left, pro-European force in British politics any more. But when I try to cheer them up by pointing out that the Lib Dems surely fulfil that description, those miserable MPs shrug their shoulders. None are considering defecting to Tim Farron’s party. While many moderate Labour MPs are asked the whole time why they don’t ‘f*** off and join the Tories’, no-one makes the same suggestion about their