At the Liberal Democrats party conference in Brighton, the merchandise stand is offering bags of 25 yellow balloons, reduced from £7 to £4. Each balloon carries the party emblem, the bird of liberty, a crumpled little sparrow on the flaccid yellow rubber. If only Ed Davey was here, to fill them with his caring breath. He’d do it, too. You’d only have to ask.
There is so much Lib Dem merch on offer: Liberal Democrat hand sanitiser (wash your hands of austerity!), a Liberal Democrat ice scraper for £3, and a mug holder that says “I Am a Beveridge”, in honour of the Liberal peer whose report was a founding document of the welfare state, for 50p. The faces of Lib Dem MPs have been printed on mugs and keyrings. They smile upwards from a tray of badges. Two young party members are sifting through them, exclaiming when they find a rare one – “Look, it’s Rachel Gilmour from Tiverton and Minehead!” It’s a game, like Pokémon, except Lib Dem backbenchers are significantly less numerous, and children don’t want to collect them.
The merchandise stand is one of many that make up the conference’s accompanying exhibition. There’s a stand for Lib Dems Abroad, on which – I’m unable to establish why – a toy otter is prominently displayed. There are the Lib Dem Friends of the Armed Forces and Lib Dem Friends of Palestine and Lib Dem Friends of Hong Kong and Lib Dem Friends of Kashmir. Everyone is friends, in this most genial of political parties.
This doesn’t mean everyone is entirely happy with the party’s direction. One member reminisces about the celebrations of 2024, when the party had just won 72 seats, its greatest result in more than a century. They don’t feel enough has been done to capitalise on that victory.
At the stand for the Young Liberals, I speak to a woman with pink streaks in her hair. She hands me a leaflet that is fronted by an image of a group of young people holding up a trans pride flag. I ask a rambling question about whether the party is losing young voters to the Greens. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I just zoned out for a moment while you were talking. Can you repeat the question?”
Yes, they are losing young voters to the Greens. All the young woman’s friends outside the party are either disgusted by politics entirely, or Zack Polanski converts. She doesn’t think there is a Lib Dem MP who can compete with Polanski – whom she calls Zack – on social media, but she doesn’t think they need to. Polanski will not be able to be so online, she says, when (and indeed, if) he becomes an MP.
And anyway, the Lib Dems have their own secret weapon: diligence. A freshly elected young councillor shrugs at the prospect of a snap election or forming another coalition. He’s more interested in the upcoming local elections. He believes in the classic Lib Dem strategy of getting into a council, working hard, being useful, talking about police officers and potholes.
Others in the party are talking about a scenario that seems ever-more possible: Labour loses its majority, and the Lib Dems help them over the line. In one of the press huddles, a Lib Dem MP mutters that the Tories are “planning a dodgy deal” with Reform after the next election, but around the Brighton Centre party members also whisper of deals. They watch PMQs, they see the agreement and genial banter between Ed and Andy, and they wonder.
Clearly, the last coalition ended badly. They do not intend to get caught up, as they once did, in the glittering promises of a suitor. One minute you’re smiling in the rose garden with a charming Tory, a few years later you wake up and realise you’ve bankrupted a generation of young people and sold off the Royal Mail. The sugar rush of Cleggmania, the fairytale wedding of Nick and Dave, was followed by a hangover from which it took a decade to recover.
But Labour would be a different partner, and Davey is a different leader, and for this conference they have a new slogan: “We care, we fight”. It’s a terrible slogan, a mashing together of the carer Ed Davey actually is, and the hard man Ed Davey obviously isn’t. Everyone knows you’re either a lover or a fighter. Niceness is incompatible with being Hard. I walk around the Brighton Centre saying “We care, we fight” to Lib Dems and noting their pained expressions. “It’s short,” says one, brightly, before repeating, with an emphatic nod: “Short.”
On the Saturday evening, Ed Davey talks about his political awakening. He shows his party a picture of himself at university, brimming with ideals. Pointing to the photo, he adds: “That’s my lovely Nana, by the way.” With the greatest respect to Ed and his family: You what mate? You do know you’re the leader of a political party? You do know you’re on stage? Can you imagine Attlee, or Lloyd George, or Churchill or Blair or Thatcher or Harold Wilson after five brandies or any remotely consequential figure in British political history, ever, saying “that’s my lovely Nana, by the way”?
This is the saccharine gurgling of a society drunk on emotion. This is the mewling, infantilised dystopia bought for us by reality TV and social media. Imagine: it’s 2030, and Labour has limped back into government in coalition with the Lib Dems. Davey is foreign secretary. JD Vance and Vladimir Putin arrive for talks. They’re threatening to carve some chunks off Europe. Big Ed furrows his brow, shakes his head. Then he points to the picture on the wall: “That’s my lovely Nana, by the way.” And back to the Kremlin they will go, all plans for World War Three shelved, their military ambitions chastened by the memory of Ed’s lovely Nana.
Davey then pours more syrup on his audience as he goes on to describe what is, for him, our proudest national moment: the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. He talks about Mo Farah, who was illegally trafficked to the UK as a child, and became a national hero. “Just imagine what some people would say about him now,” he says. “But in 2012, everyone cheered him on! Everyone did the Mobot!” And in conclusion… irregular migration is great, because it’s our best source of long-distance runners? Is that what he means?
There’s no time for such speculation, because Davey is heading for the ultimate conference power move: the Failed Attempt to Get a Chant Going. Only a top political operator can stand on a stage, chanting, and accept the horrifying reality that no one else is joining in. In this situation a normal person will instinctively burrow through the stage, deep into the earth below. Only a skilled politician can repeat the same phrase over and over again in front of an unresponsive audience without cringeing themselves inside out. Penny Mordaunt managed it during her “stand up and fight” speech at the 2023 Tory conference. Davey manages it easily. “We care, we fight,” he chants, beaming, totally unbothered that the audience is too mortified to join in. A show of strength, and a message to any prospective coalition partner: perhaps you can borrow Ed Davey’s voters, perhaps you can get him to take the blame for your policies. But you will never humiliate him.
[Further reading: Will AI kill us all?]
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This article appears in the 24 Sep 2026 issue of the New Statesman, A Sense of Power
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Love Will Dunn, but this takes the crown for the worst article ever published by the New Statesmen that I’ve ever come into contact with. Will’s examples of Prime ministers all have their own problems (alright, racist, racist again, started an unnecessary war, destroyed Britain, homophobe). I’m not a Lib-Dem, but a greater credit needs to be given to the only party leader who doesn’t carry the weight of a tumultuous past behind him.