The Lib Dems: a party reborn
They’re “a resilient bunch”, the Liberal Democrats, said The Times. When Vince Cable reluctantly took over (unopposed) as their new leader after the 2017 election, the party seemed to be all but finished. But the Lib Dems were in surprisingly rude health this week as they chose Cable’s deputy, Jo Swinson, to become their first female leader. She was elected with nearly two-thirds of the votes cast by party members, easily beating her rival, the former energy secretary Ed Davey. Liberalism is “alive and thriving”, Swinson declared in her acceptance speech, in which she pledged to “take on nationalism and populism” and to do “whatever it takes to stop Brexit”. She stood before the party, she said, as a possible prime minister. That claim is “probably hyperbole”, but of this there is no doubt: “the Lib Dems matter again”.
Swinson has a promising foundation to build on, said Jessica Elgot in The Guardian. Her party’s unequivocal opposition to Brexit should enable it to win over more disaffected Remain voters, and there are likely to be further defections from former members of Change UK. The Lib Dems are also expected to win next week’s by-election in the seat of Brecon and Radnorshire, adding to their tally of 12 MPs. However, things will get trickier for the party if and when Brexit happens. At that point, “stop Brexit” will cease to be a rallying cry and Swinson will have a “difficult choice” about whether to campaign to rejoin the EU.
In the meantime, Swinson will project a very different image to the older men leading the two main parties, said George Parker in the FT. Educated at a state school in Scotland, she was elected to the Commons at just 25, becoming the youngest MP, or “baby of the House”. She’s still only 39. Swinson is a tough cookie, said Iain Martin on Reaction. life. After losing her East Dunbartonshire seat in 2015, she won it back in 2017 “by facing down and out-organising the SNP”. But her manner may become grating over time: she “can’t shake that terrible, pious, illiberal ultra-liberal tendency to look astonished, truly shocked and appalled, when encountering opinions other than her own”. Still, in the all-too-likely event of the Tories having to call an early election this autumn, her party would certainly be in a strong position. It’s quite conceivable that they could end up “as power-brokers in a hung parliament”, or even that a Lib Dem could emerge as “a compromise prime minister at the heart of a ‘rainbow’ coalition involving a diminished Labour Party and the SNP”.