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Political roadkill to phoenix: Can the Liberal Democrat surge last?

The party appears resurrected after a strong showing in the European Parliament election - how did it happen?

Lib Dem
Image: The Lib Dems won 16 seats in the European Parliament election
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I’ve been a journalist since 2012 and not once in that time have I seen the Lib Dems look… happy.

For years they've been the running joke of British politics. The Lib Dem bird barely twitching in the road: political roadkill.

Yet all of a sudden that roadkill has shown signs of life - it is now more phoenix than anything else.

Out of nowhere, their poll rating has risen and quickly; mammoth local election gains, equally impressive European results. The question is why and why now?

Politics is sometimes beguilingly mysterious. In one sense it's difficult to divine the exact cause of this Lib Dem revivification.

Many conditions remain the same. Their leader remains the same, their policy on Brexit has been entirely consistent, there is little objective reason why their rebirth should come now and not at any other time over the past year or more.

Until very recently, so unlikely did an absolution of their reputation seem that a whole new progressive party was founded on the precise rationale that it couldn't.

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So instead, during a long interregnum, they barely secured a look in.

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The impressive blocs of voters both main parties put together in 2017 (80% plus of the electorate) largely held.

Through all the Brexit cataclysms, throughout the antisemitism debacle, nothing seemed to dent either. The Brexit culture war insulated both against any travail or woe, voters ostensibly afraid to retreat from their respective camps, lest the other steal a march.

Even when May failed to get her deal through, once, twice, three times - the Conservatives' ratings held but the stasis finally seemed to dissipate in spring of this year and in particular after Britain's failure to leave on 29 March.

Newly elected European Parliament candidate Sheila Ritchie of the Liberal Democrats (C) is joined by leader Willie Rennie (R) after attending the declaration at the City Chambers on May 27, 2019 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Image: Sheila Ritchie (centre) picked up one of Scotland's MEP seats for the Lib Dems

There are moments when governments and prime ministers lose their credibility: Black Wednesday for John Major, the Lebanon-Israel conflict for Tony Blair, the election that never was for Gordon Brown.

They never recover, either in the eyes of their party or the electorate. May lost both on 29 March and the drop off was a rapid one.

Perhaps Brexiters did not follow the minutiae of Theresa May's Brexit calamities, they did not closely observe the botched summits nor the cabinet walkouts, but they did notice that we hadn't left.

They lent the Conservatives their vote in 2017 and quietly resumed their lives, as 'twas ever thus with voters, tuning out the daily political noise with an inherent assumption that those they voted for would do as they were tasked.

When they tuned back in and noticed, despite the prime minister's scores of assurances, that we hadn't left, those votes were called in and lent anew, this time in fury rather than in trust, to the Brexit Party, conveniently and strategically founded for that very purpose.

The genesis of this new force, I suspect, started a political redox reaction - Farage's success frightened many Remainers and it is that fear which to some extent explains the resurrection of the Lib Dems.

Remainers saw the Brexit Party, with its unyielding, uncompromising message and came to fear that there existed no equivalent counterweight.

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage reacts after the European Parliament election results for the South East are announced
Image: Farage's success scared many Remainers and that - to some extent - explains the Lib Dem resurgence

But it's more than just fear, the Lib Dem rise is umbilically attached to its Brexit mirror image.

The very presence of the Brexit Party on the ballot paper, the word "Brexit" squarely eyeballing every voter in the polling booth now subverts every election.

It makes each one, to some extent at least, a mini-referendum on Brexit itself. This simple yet genius name has allowed the party to hoover up Leave support.

Every vote cast for them, every election won imbues a hard Brexit with extra legitimacy. When people furiously object that they have no manifesto, no other policies, it is to miss the point.

The party exists only to add legitimation to their project. And that is why political physics demanded a balancing force: an alternative, a corresponding Remain option on every ballot paper too.

Had Change UK the foresight to call themselves "The Remain Party", it would have been theirs for the taking - but they erred.

Remainers waited too for a firm response from Labour but answer came there none, just more flannel, more ponderous wandering in their own Brexit maze of hell.

Such obfuscation was unsatisfactory, because the simplicity of the Brexit Party, required a response as unabashed.

Liberal Democrats EU elections manifesto
Image: The party's manifesto for the European election had a clear message

Worse, day after day, Corbyn confirmed Remainers' fears that a vote for Labour could not be construed as a true anti-Brexit Party vote by repeatedly imploring electors to vote about a subject other than Europe, to care about something else, to be divided about other things, to vote for him for another reason.

But that was to misunderstand the rearranging of the political equation going on all around him, this was the crucial, essential issue - asking voters to care about something else, to categorise themselves as something other than Remainer or Brexiter a pipe dream; consequently Corbyn appeared almost an inert, disinterested figure out of his own time, watching whilst politics fizzed.

As Labour traipsed into talks with the government every day, it became ever clearer the natural home of discontent, the Opposition, was no longer available. They became caught in a horrible bind: Leavers were angry they weren't cooperating enough. Remainers furious they seemed to be cooperating too much.

And so, as Remainers' patience with Labour broke, they appraised the other means available and found the Lib Dems the best fit - a party which, whatever their previous record, had been at least consistent, the best yin, to the Brexit Party's yang.

Their resurrection came because the moment demanded it - the need for them to be absolved of their sins, has absolved them of their sins. It has led to some truly stunning gains.

Many observers of politics, especially on Twitter, spent much time in the wake of the European analysing the Brexit Party and Lib Dem performances, expending much energy between themselves arguing about who really won.

The truth is, they both did. Their victories were connected and intertwined and may become increasingly symbiotic. So long as the Brexit Party exists, at least, the performance of the Lib Dems will be enhanced.

Sir Vince Cable launches the Liberal Democrats European election campaign
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They are two sides of the same coin: the rise of both represents a firm turn in our Brexit politics away from any compromise position and to purity.

The biggest danger for whoever takes over as Lib Dem leader (and for the Brexit Party for that matter) is that the default setting of British politics inevitably clicks back in.

The Lib Dems will be extremely vulnerable to any flight of Remainer voters: in a general election not only will Labour be able to train in their crosshairs on the Lib Dems' coalition record on austerity (both putative contenders served in the coalition government) but also wear once more upon the comfortable armour plated shroud that is our electoral system.

They will say that any vote lost to the Lib Dems helps guarantee a Tory majority, worse a majority of a no-dealer prime minister.

In reverse, the Conservative Party will make the same argument about the Brexit Party, that indulging your deepest Brexit passions will result only in the opposite of what you want, a Labour government beholden to the Lib Dems and SNP, determined to reverse Brexit altogether. As before, this will prove potent.

That it is still easily the most likely scenario, but the danger for the main parties is what sustained their big vote shares for so long - that culture war- will now sustain these new(ish) entrants to the political marketplace.

That if the Brexit Party and the Lib Dems truly have convinced voters that they, not the old forces, are the best guarantors of their preferred Brexit outcomes then those voters might prove as difficult to lure away from their new homes as they did for so long from their old.

And if a poll lead for both challengers becomes sustained the ever harder that task will become.

Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson
Image: Jo Swinson is one of these bidding to take over from Sir Vince Cable

Indeed if the leads become so large, it will be the challengers that will try to argue that the risk lies with voting for the old parties not the new. That's a long way off yet - though the latest poll out this weekend puts the Brexit Party in first place with the Lib Dems but one point behind Labour.

It is not yet certain we are at a moment of irredeemable crisis for the two party system but given it's happening all over Europe, we shouldn't be surprised if finally, FPTP notwithstanding it happens here too.

And if it does and an appeal to our outmoded, rickety electoral system is the best Labour and the Tories have got, then perhaps those two main parties really don't deserve that status any more.