Here's how the LibDems can replace the Tories as the Official Opposition

Ed Davey's maddest stunt yet

Tickets still available! Don’t forget to book your ticket to see me ‘in conversation’ with Zion Lights talking all things nuclear on October 15th.

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One of my favourite things about politics at the moment is that I don’t have to think about the Conservative Party much.

Even though the leadership contest is, in theory, meaningful, the reality is that all of the candidates are just saying stuff – whereas the Labour party in power are actually doing stuff.

However, at some point soon, we’re going to have to care again, because the Tories were not completely wiped out – so what they say and do will actually matter.

Perhaps at some point, the party might even claw its way back to contention. Despite receiving its worst result since 1835, history would suggest that after a term or two in the wilderness, a new generation will lead the party back towards power.¹

At least, that’s how we think politics should work in our heads. But there is another way it could go.

If you remember back to the election, one storyline that didn’t quite land was the prospect of the Liberal Democrats becoming the second largest party, displacing the Conservatives as His Majesty’s Official Opposition.

It’s the sort of scenario that is a perennial subject of speculation during election campaigns when one of the two major parties is badly faltering. This time the chatter was egged on by actual data too. A number of spicy MRP polls, like the one from Electoral Calculus just days before the vote, predicted the LibDems would win 71 seats, to the Conservatives’ 60.

As it turned out though, on election day it wasn’t to be. The LibDems actually over-performed that prediction, earning 72 seats in total – but the Tories held on to 121 seats, so it wasn’t quite the Canada ‘93-style wipeout many people were hoping for.

And now we’re several months into a new government, with the table set for the next five years, that should probably end the LibDems-in-second speculation, at least until the next election campaign.

But my brain doesn’t work like that. Even though the dust has barely settled, I’ve been thinking about what might happen next time, in 2028 or whenever. Because I can’t help but wonder if with the right political strategy – and more than a little luck – that the LibDems could finally do it, and claim the mantle of Official Opposition.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t say this is likely by any stretch of the imagination, but I definitely think there is a path – especially if the LibDems start laying the groundwork now. So below the jump, let’s dig into how they might do it, and imagine Ed Davey’s craziest stunt yet, when he dramatically strides into the Commons chamber… and sits down at the dispatch box opposite Keir Starmer.

I’m going to shamelessly clickbait you into taking out a paid subscription here by teasing the fact that there’s two extremely interesting charts below the paywall. And because you’ve read this far into an article about the Liberal Democrats, I know that you’re exactly the sort of person who would find the prospect of a graph hard to resist.