In some ways, this has been the quintessential Liberal Democrat Party Conference. Delegates have descended on Bournemouth to eat fish and chips on the beach and furiously debate the merits of different forms of proportional representation. Amid the crowds filling the auditorium or earnestly voting on policy motions one can easily spot the distinctive blue flash of an EU beret. At the Glee Club on Monday night, Lib Dem parliamentarians were corralled onstage to sing a song about the party’s confused policy on Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent, to the tune of Yellow Submarine. Some variant of this can be relied upon to occur every year.
But despite the party having its largest ever cohort of MPs – and therefore its greatest chance to influence the government since the coalition years – the big question hanging over conference this year has not been one of policy. It has been more fundamental than that. Who are the Lib Dems for? Or, to flip the question on its head, who are they against?
In electoral terms, Ed Davey’s party would appear to have a clear choice to make: continue to reap the benefits of the disintegration of the Conservative Party by hoovering up the votes of despairing Tories (which served them so well in 2024), or capitalise on the sharp decline of the Labour government’s popularity by offering an alternative to those on the left. The Lib Dems seem to believe they do not have to choose: asked whether they thought their party should veer left or right, members I spoke to – from retired grandmothers to school pupils – insisted they could have it both ways, simply by being the “only sensible alternative”. The opponent in their heads wasn’t Kemi Badenoch, who has barely been mentioned this conference, or even Keir Starmer, whose name is uttered in the tone of a dismayed schoolteacher discussing their disappointment with a student who had so much potential. No, this conference – the Lib Dem Conference, full of Lib Dems – has been all about Nigel Farage.
Farage has been haunting Bournemouth. Toy figurines of the Reform leader were handed out to journalists, badged up as a “plastic patriot”. Farage and his party of five MPs has been invoked on everything from foreign policy to the NHS to local government. In a headline slot on Monday afternoon, the main stage was devoted to “Reform Watch”, a Q&A session for members to ask Lib Dem councillors how to combat the threat of Farage. “Is patriotism the solution to far-right populism?” one asked. “Real patriotism that we see in our communities all the time,” came the response. “Paying your taxes, Nigel, that’s real patriotism!”
Inevitably here in Bournemouth, the shudder elicited by Farage’s name is turbocharged by the accompanying reference to Donald Trump. Davey has spent the months since Trump’s second inauguration occupying the vacancy left by Labour and the Tories: vacillating on how to respond to the increasingly erratic actions of the UK’s historic ally. This conference, he has defined himself as the antithesis to Trump, and by extension Farage – or, possibly, vice versa. At times it has been hard to tell which is which. In the Lib Dem mind, Trump and Farage are essentially interchangeable.
“That is Trump’s America. Don’t let it become Farage’s Britain.” This was Davey’s refrain in his conference speech today. Again and again Davey contrasted the Lib Dem worldview – one of a nation “that believes in tolerance, decency, and respect for both individual freedom and the rule of law” – to the Maga movement across the Atlantic, which he warned Farage was just itching to inject into the UK.
Every long-standing area of Lib Dem policy was framed in terms of the battle against Trump and Farage. Closer ties with the EU (demanded by the blue berets in the audience) were essential to “strengthen our hand in dealing with Trump”. Net zero and tackling climate change were set up as a way to protect Britain from Putin and his apologists (they know who they are); social media safeguards versus the ego of Elon Musk. Trump’s name was mentioned 24 times; Farage’s 30; Musk’s ten. Badenoch got one direct reference, Starmer none at all.
Even Davey’s personal mission on health and social care – an issue on which he has built up significant credibility even among voters ambivalent to the Lib Dems, by speaking so powerfully about caring for his disabled son – was reimagined in terms of the Trump White House cancelling grants for cancer research and Robert F Kennedy’s anti-vax stance. This was “a decision – by the way – that was enthusiastically applauded by Farage’s party at their conference”. Davey had kicked off his speech with a similar jibe, joking that “somehow we’ve managed to get through it all without bringing someone up onto the stage to argue that it was Covid vaccines that caused cancer in the Royal Family”. The crowd laughed knowingly. It’s important to know who your enemy is.
What is the Lib Dem strategy here? One answer is that they are simply following the new set of rules for British politics, which dictate that Reform is the centre of the solar system, the metric against which all parties must define themselves. At the Reform Watch event, one panellist noted wryly that he got more coverage now as the official opposition to Reform on Kent County Council than he ever did as a Lib Dem councillor before. If everyone insists on talking about Reform all the time, the Lib Dems argue, however disproportionate that may be given the party’s tiny Westminster cohort, why not cash in and get some of that attention? If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
But something else is going on too. Davey called the Lib Dems “the only party now representing the views and values of Britain’s decent silent majority”. “Neither of those old parties can win back people’s trust, neither of them will win the battle of ideas for the future of our country,” he continued. “So it comes down to us. Or Nigel Farage.”
Are the Lib Dems really the alternative to Reform? In terms of electoral geography, there are vanishingly few seats shaping up to be Reform-Lib Dem races. The Tories’ former heartlands colonised by the “Japanese Knotweed” (as both the Lib Dems and their opponents like to call them) in last year’s election are not Reform targets. The voter segments Reform are chasing may share the Lib Dems’ fury at the Conservatives and disappointment with Labour, but have little else in common.
And yet, the mood at the conference is that this is precisely why the Lib Dems can take the fight to Farage, in a way the other parties are nervous of doing. They are not afraid to antagonise the Reform base, so Davey can be more robust in his condemnation of Farage’s creeping extremism – such as threatening to remove the right to live in Britain from millions of people who have built a life here legally – than Starmer or Badenoch dare.
And, without the strictures of realpolitik that constrain the government or the historic ties to the Republicans that choke the Tories, Davey can be more robust against Trump too. Comparisons to the fictional prime minister played by Hugh Grant in Love Actually, who courageously defends all the things that make Britain great from an antagonistic and creepy US president, have been made with increasing regularity as Davey has dedicated his PMQs questions to attacking Trump.
In his keynote today, Davey did not so much allude to the Love Actually speech as pay homage to it. For the country of Shakespeare, Churchill and the Beatles, insert “the place Hollywood comes to make Barbie, Spider-Man and Mission Impossible, the land of the Lionesses and the home of Formula One”; for David Beckham’s right and left feet, “male voice choirs and Hogmanay… and the best rollercoasters and waterslides on the planet”.
This is patriotism done the Lib Dem way: marching bands and “Sweet Caroline”, village greens and cricket pavilions, expressing love for one’s country by volunteering at the school fair or donating to repair the church roof, not by vandalising roundabouts. It’s about reclaiming the flag. Earlier in the conference, former Lib Dem leader Tim Farron had draped himself in a flag combining the Union Jack and the Cross of St George to declare “We will not have our history, our heritage, and our home stolen by the poison of nationalism”. This is the emergence of the anti-Reform, redefining patriotism as love and pride. “I actually love Britain,” Davey told the conference on Tuesday. A deliberate Love Actually reference, to those listening out for it? This is the Hugh-Grantification of politics. It’s Maga through the looking-glass.
Will it have any impact? The criticism thrown at Davey over the past year is that having achieved something astonishing by winning 72 MPs and becoming the third largest party in parliament, the Lib Dems have done little with it. Their promise, last conference, to use their influence to nudge the government further on key policy areas (EU relations, health and social care, the environment) has come to little – no one in Westminster credits Ed Davey with the government’s EU reset, or with the extra cash won for the NHS by Wes Streeting in the Spending Review. The steady-as-she-goes strategy has been the source of growing frustration.
Now, the Lib Dems have a different raison d’être. They will no doubt keep trying to lure over disgruntled Tories and happily accept the voters Labour is losing on its left flank, but that is a by-product of the main aim: take on Farage, take on Trump, take on everything they stand for. Because right now, the Lib Dems argue, with their blue berets and their debates on PR and their “plastic patriot” figurines, they’re the best anti-Reform chance Britain’s got.
[Further reading: Should the Lib Dems turn left or right?]
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