Despite the sunny weather and clear skies that graced the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth this week, there was a Nigel Farage-shaped cloud looming over proceedings.
It wasn’t just the media coverage, as Reform’s plans to deport thousands of legal migrants stole the headlines.
Nigel Farage’s insurgent party has bumped the Lib Dems into fourth place in the polls and threatens to usurp their standing as the go-to alternative to Labour and the Conservatives.
It seems incredible to the Lib Dem faithful that just over a year since their record haul of 72 seats – making them the third largest party in the Commons – it is Farage and his four MPs who are making all the political running.
Across speeches and fringe panels, the key question party members were asking was how leader Ed Davey can tackle this?
Lib Dem insiders, however, are insistent that they have a plan to grow the party’s standing. The first step? Overtake Kemi Badenoch’s moribund Conservative Party.
‘Operation Leapfrog’
Davey revealed his plan in his conference speech on Tuesday, telling the faithful: “Let me tell you – in confidence – our secret first target for the next general election. Our first target is to win more seats than the Conservatives, for the first time since Herbert Henry Asquith in 1910.”
The approach, internally dubbed “Operation Leapfrog”, involves tempting One Nation, remain-voting Conservative voters who dislike Farage to switch to the Lib Dems. Once that’s completed, they can set their sights more firmly on hauling in Labour and Reform.
If Davey’s words have shades of David Steel’s 1981 exhortation to “go back to your constituencies and prepare for government” during the heady days of the then Liberal-SDP Alliance, there is, nevertheless, plenty of internal confidence that the plan could work.
While Labour and the Tories have seen their poll ratings fall, and Reform’s has risen, the Lib Dems have remained steady at around 13 per cent since the election.
The latest BMG polling for The i Paper, published at the end of August, showed the Tories had slipped from 24 per cent at the General Election to 17 per cent, Labour from 35 to 20 per cent and Reform surging from 15 to 35 per cent.
The Lib Dems were unchanged on 13 per cent – meaning it would only take a small poll bump to put them into third behind Labour and Reform.
Insiders say they have been encouraged in this approach by the failure of the Tories to recover from the battering they took at the polls last year.
One MP, representing a seat which was held by the Tories until 2024, told The i Paper: “When you speak to voters, they just never mention the Conservative party at all.”
Another MP, pointing to Labour’s poor polling, said: “At the next election, southern England could be a straight fight between the Lib Dems and Reform.”
The Lib Dems are to be more vocal in their criticism of Elon Musk and Donald Trump(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The plan by party strategists is to emphasise that the Lib Dems are more aggressive in their attacks on the likes of Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Elon Musk than any other party, making them the natural home for voters who dislike the right and favour closer ties to Europe.
On Sunday, for example, Davey branded Elon Musk a criminal for “allowing online harm to children” on X, leading to former Reform MP Rupert Lowe defending Musk, saying he had been very good for free speech.
But there are dangers. One backbencher called for the Lib Dems to accept that to win over voters from Reform, it would be necessary to admit that some of their complaints, particularly on immigration, are valid.
The MP said: “Our activists are to the left of us as MPs, but our voters are definitely to the right. When they see net migration of nearly a million, they think it is inexplicable.”
And there are question marks over what the party actually stands for on the economy, which voters usually name as their most important election issue. “We’ve got a strong message on the NHS and care, and on rivers obviously,” an insider said. “But on the economy, we definitely need to find a way to be more coherent.”
Another Lib Dem MP warned against attacking Farage too aggressively – suggesting it could end up backfiring. “We can’t demonise him because British people love an underdog,” they said.
“That’s what happened with Boris Johnson – we kept saying he was totally awful and voters said hold on a minute, give him a chance. Then when he got in they realised he actually was awful.”
Pollsters are also sceptical about the party’s ability to grow. Chis Hopkins, political research director at Savanta, told The i Paper that the risk for the Lib Dems was that Reform had “usurped them” as the protest vote and that the party “may have hit an electoral ceiling”.
“They’re doing well,” he said, “but it’s hard to see how they can build on this any further.”
The big barrier is that much of the Lib Dems’ electoral success has been built on hyper-local campaigns and tactical voting, rather than the party’s national policies.
‘Reform Watch’
Nigel Farage is joined on stage by Dame Andrea Jenkyns winner of Greater Lincolnshire mayoralty (L), and Sarah Pochin winner of the Runcorn and Helsby by-election (R) as Reform UK celebrate historic local election victories on May 02, 2025 in Paddock Wood, England. (Photo by Lia Toby/Getty Images)The Lib Dems are also determined to build on their successes at a local level.
Insiders boast they are doing “better than ever” in council elections, with the party having won more seats than both Labour and the Conservatives for the first time ever in the 2025 local elections.
The local level is where they also hope to take the fight to Farage. After the last council elections, Davey established a new “Reform Watch” scrutiny board comprising council leaders in areas which now have a significant Reform presence.
Delivering their findings at the Conference, the group said the key to taking on Reform was providing a positive vision and tackling what the Lib Dems claim is their misinformation.
“My obvious advice is: expect Reform to say a lot of things that aren’t true, that you can beat them with a really good community campaign,” said Kent Council opposition leader Antony Hook.
Reform would deny that their statements are untrue.
The approach was echoed by Amanda Hopgood, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Durham Council. “Stick to what we know,” she said. “Stick to our moral compass around being true. Liberal Democrats about going out there and campaigning about being feet on the ground and tell people what we do, tell people who we are, and put that positive message out.”
But strategists have warned privately that it may take years for voters to notice. “Most voters can’t see this sort of thing; they have to actually feel it,” one councillor said.
Insiders also caution that Reform has an edge online, delivering punchy messages without having to provide detail.
Sir Ed Davey batting during a game of beach cricket with LibDem MPs beside the famous beach huts at West Undercliff Promenade, in Bournemouth, Dorset, ahead of his speech at the Liberal Democrats autumn conference. He has come under fire for his ‘bullsh*t stunts’ (Photo by Ben Birchall/PA Wire)
Getting their message in the media has become one of the biggest concerns for the Liberal Democrats at this conference.
Some point their fingers at the media for their lack of coverage, and members vented this frustration with a ditty at the conference’s annual Glee Club, where members sing political rewrites of popular songs.
Set to the tune of “The Wild Rover”, the “The Impartial Media Song” included the lyrics: “At Liberal leaders I happily sneer, despite them returning with MPs galore, I’ll cover the party in detail no more… I’ll cover Reform in the way that they like.”
Many Liberal Democrats believe that the decisions taken in the coming years by the media – especially the BBC – could prove crucial to their party’s fortunes.
They recently went public with their claim that the national broadcaster is unfairly denying them coverage, with Davey reportedly meeting the BBC Director General Tim Davie in July to complain. The BBC said at the time that the Lib Dems’ greater number of MPs had led to more coverage.
Others, however, are placing the blame for their lack of airtime firmly at the leadership’s front door. Davey has become famous for his whimsical photo ops, but some MPs have urged him to stop with the “bullshit stunts” and focus more on capitalising on the woes facing Labour.
Ahead of the conference, one Lib Dem MP told The i Paper there was a “huge amount of disquiet. We’re not cutting through… none of the messages are landing”.
‘Niall Garbage’
Despite the varied pitfalls in their electoral strategy, the Lib Dems refuse to be disheartened by the challenge that faces them.
This became evident from the first night of the conference, when Jess Brown-Fuller MP joked at an opening rally that the party spoke to much about Farage, and that she’d refer to him as “Niall Garbage”.
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Her tone became more serious, adding: “While their conference was absolutely hilarious, it isn’t really a laughing matter. Reform thrives on anger. They want Britain to be permanently cross – cross with immigrants, cross with Europe, cross with their own neighbours if necessary.”
But she framed the threat of Farage as an opportunity for the Lib Dems, adding: “They leave a space wide open for a progressive party, and it’s our job to fill it.”
“So get outside and get knocking on doors, because the two-party system is finished. The people are asking, they’re begging, for a progressive alternative, and we as a party have a brave, bold and better vision for the United Kingdom.”
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