Lib Dems aim to turn election success into influence

I don’t think I have ever seen such undiluted joy at a party conference.

The Liberal Democrat gathering in Brighton amounted to the party giving itself a four-day pat on the back.

And little wonder: they were crushed to near irrelevance numerically in Parliament for nearly a decade.

Now, there are more Lib Dem MPs than ever before and they can’t quite believe it.

There are three things I reckon tell you a lot about the Liberal Democrat strategy for 2024 – before, during and now after the election.

Geography, tone and message.

Firstly, geography.

It was a ruthless geographical focus, rather than a boom in enthusiasm for the Lib Dems, that explained their bumper general election result.

As the House of Commons Library has pointed out, external: “The Liberal Democrats won 72 seats with 12.2% of the vote. This was 61 seats more than in 2019, with an increased vote share of 0.7 percentage points.”

They did this by focusing on where they could win.

The mastermind behind the strategy was the party’s director of field campaigns, Dave McCobb.

It is not often backroom teams get public adulation and namechecks, but Mr McCobb did in Sir Ed Davey’s speech – so central was he to the party’s current standing.