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The Liberal Democrats should drop their stunts and offer a more serious policy programme if they want to gain support among voters, according to a study presented at the party’s annual conference.
Polling by the More in Common thinktank, shown to Lib Dem members at the gathering in Bournemouth, suggested that while it has the scope to go beyond its historic total of 72 MPs at the last election, many voters tempted by the party remain uncertain about what it stands for.
A particularly notable finding was that more than 60% of voters thought stunts by party leader Ed Davey during the general election were not appropriate when the nation faced so many challenges, with only 21% saying they were a good way to get attention.
The feeling was strong even among current Lib Dem voters, 47% of whom worried that Davey’s sequence of image-friendly escapades risked making the party appear less serious.
Davey’s photo opportunities during the election campaign, including a bungee jump and going on a water slide and a rollercoaster, were credited with helping the party break through, and were tied to policy announcements.
While they have been scaled back, at this year’s conference Davey arrived at the venue at the head of a marching band while, at its opening rally on Saturday, former leader Tim Farron condemned what he called the aggressively nationalistic use of the union jack and St George’s cross, with the audience all given small union flags to wave.
Lib Dem officials argue that the party does have a suite of properly costed policies, expanded beyond the election focus on key issues such as the NHS and care and waterway pollution.
Ahead of the conference, Davey set out proposals to call a national emergency over asylum as a way to clear the long backlog of unprocessed cases and stop refugees having to spend years in limbo.
In her speech on Sunday, Daisy Cooper, the party’s deputy leader and Treasury spokesperson, set out a plan to target big banks with a windfall tax on profits, with the money used for initiatives to cut people’s energy bills.
Speaking at the fringe event where the More in Common study was presented, Calum Miller, the Lib Dems’ foreign affairs spokesperson, denied the continued use of stunts was hampering the party.
“We all know that one of the reasons the strategy of doing something visually appealing was adopted by Ed and by the party was so that we would get coverage in the media,” he said.
“And those of you who saw the photos of Ed with his marching band yesterday, or even for that matter, the photos of a sea of union jacks at the rally, will have seen that it was covered extensively across the media.”
Privately, other MPs and officials take a similar view. “It’s all about the balance,” one said. “With the stunts, even when a paper does negative coverage it comes with a large picture of Ed looking happy and empathetic.”
The More in Common research, based on polling in August and September, found while the Lib Dems are stuck on close to 15% support, a total of 30% of the electorate are open to backing the party.
With many of the new seats won by Lib Dems last year considered defendable, even an election now could see the party win more than 100 seats, it found.
In less positive news for Davey, only a third of voters polled said they would have confidence in the Liberal Democrats as part of a coalition government, while many remained uncertain about what the Lib Dems stand for.
However, the party has seen rapidly increasing support among younger voters, likely in part due to its strong position on Gaza. Davey boycotted last week’s state dinner with Donald Trump over the lack of US efforts to push Israel to seek peace.
The Lib Dems were also notably more vehement than Labour in condemning the language seen at last weekend’s far-right march in London.
Speaking to reporters after her speech, Cooper said she opposed the recent spate of hanging flags from lamp-posts and other street furniture: “If you want to display your patriotism, you can put a flag up in your house, in your window. Putting it on public property can send a different kind of message.”
