UK Liberal Democrats leadership election, 2017

[parochial boy]

Also worth noting that the one characteristic they should look out for is someone who generally comes across well as a leader; there's a reason that Thatcher/Blair/Clegg/Cameron were all able to do bend their parties ideologies, and perform very well in elections. If they had someone like Clegg without his baggage they could do well regardless of what position they take

If they manage to solidify their credentials as the pro-Europe, centrist party, eventually they will catch back on with the youth.

Why would that help them with young voters?

Yeah, don't forget that their pre-2015 popularity with young voters was in no small part thanks to the fact that they presented themselves as to the left of Labour (not just tuition fees but Iraq, civil liberties and the Charles Kennedy brand of social democracy)

[parochial boy]

Tbh I'm kind of amazed that a significant portion of former LibDem voters supported Leave.

Pre-coalition, they were the main non-Labour/Tory party and were seen as 'clean' due to not having had experience in government since the War. A lot of their old vote was in no way intended as an endorsement for liberalism.

Overall, their voters were definitely more liberal than other non-Lib Dem voters in the same seat, of course.

In any case, the EU wasn't a significant political issue to most Britons until the referendum. That's what made the referendum such an own goal by Cameron. He never had to promise it, and he would not have been punished much if he had ignored the promise.

Yes, the reason the referendum happened was all about the obsessions of a certain part of the Conservative party than it was driven by any real popular demand.

The Lib Dems also had a lot of there middle of the noughties strength on the back of their opposition to the Iraq war, which never had the level of public support in the UK that it did in the US.

Also, a good deal of the Lib Dem strength in the South West was always based on them being on the left of the Tories, in a region where an "urban" party like Labour was largely unpalatable.

[parochial boy]

Iraq had little to do with the strength in the Southwest; that was more of the cause of Lib Dem strength and ability to eat into Labour in the cities, the Muslim vote and the youth and student vote. The Lib Dems were strong in the Southwest in 1997 and 2001 also (and pre-1997 they were clearly already ahead of Labour in the region back to the days of the Alliance). In order to get back to 1997-2001 support, the Lib Dems don't need another Iraq, although they would need one in order to really break the party system (deeply unlikely within the next 20 years or so).

I do think the Lib Dems will probably come back at least to a degree in the Southwest naturally once the Tories have done things to make themselves unpopular. We say that the Tories are unpopular right now, but that's not really true. They're middlingly popular, certainly nowhere near the depths of the late 90s. And the Tories could easily rebound if May leaves and is replaced by someone else.

Oh,  I didn't mean to say that their strength in the South-West was due to Iraq. The SW is like Mid-Wales or Northern Scotland in that it has always been a strong area for the Lib Dems. The fact they did particularly well round there in the New Labour era is probably due to the general weakness of the Tories at the time.

What I meant was, if you go back to the mid-2000s, the Lib Dems were able to take advantage of a very specific set of circumstances that are not the case at the moment. At the time, economic issues were kind of off the agenda as the economy was growing strongly and there wasn't really much mainstream debate over New Labour style economic policies. The major political topics at the time were things like foreign policy or identity cards, where the Lib Dems seemed to be more in tune with much of the public..

Getting down to it, I think the Lib Dems have never really won much support for their economic stances, and most people have probably never really been aware of them. So they were able to harness a good deal of public support at a time where economics faded into the background, and the sorts of issues that the public are generally quite socially liberal on where among the most salient issues.

Basically, now at a time where much of the focus is on falling living standards, job insecurity and the ongoing fall out of the 2008 crash, the Lib Dems don't really have much of any real relevance that they can say to people.

[parochial boy]

well... My initial impression is that, like Caroline Lucas, he has a personal brand that is much stronger than his party, but a popular leader does not necessarily translate into popular support. The LD's inability to position themselves is going to continue.

[parochial boy]

10 pages devoted to that...

Do you think that, on the balance, it could be said, that The Sun has something of a malign influence on British politics?