Minor success for a LibDem party going steadily downward

LIBERAL DEMOCRAT leader Tim Farron could not contain his disappointment, but Scottish counterpart Willie Rennie had genuine grounds to be pleased. While the UK party inched forward to 12 seats on Friday morning, much of this progress was down to the party north of the Border. The Scottish LibDems returned one MP in 2015, but took three seats from the SNP to bump up their final tally to a creditable four.

Rennie and election campaign director Alex Cole Hamilton led a textbook LibDem campaign – focus on a small number of constituencies and blitz each area with activity and leaflets.

The top priority was consolidating Orkney and Shetland, a safe-ish seat made vulnerable by sitting MP Alistair Carmichael’s association with the Frenchgate scandal (where he approved the leak of a false memo alleging Nicola Sturgeon preferred David Cameron as the next prime minister in 2015). In the end, he increased his majority.

Of their three top target seats – Edinburgh West, East Dunbartonshire, and Fife North East – the LibDems won the first two and lost the latter by two votes after several recounts. The disappointment in Fife was offset by taking Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross from the SNP.

The LibDem strategy mirrored the anti-SNP approach that Labour and the Conservatives also deployed across the country. The LibDems promoted themselves as the most credible Unionist party in target seats and played on anxieties about a second independence referendum.

It was Unionism, not Liberalism, that proved the trump card.

However, the successes should not be exaggerated and there is still a sense the LibDem star is permanently on the wane.

Between 1997 and 2010 the party never fell below 10 seats at a Westminster election and used to run the then Scottish Executive in a coalition with Labour in the early years of devolution.

These days winning four Scottish constituencies at a General Election is deemed to be a good result and the party has little prospect of power in Edinburgh.

However, on a night in which other parties suffered heavy losses, the LibDems can cite Friday’s result as a real success.