Feedback screeched through the PA system as Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrats’ candidate for St Albans, took to the stage of a small club in London’s Camden Market that hadn’t been cool even seven years ago when my then 17-year-old son’s band played its first gig in front of me and my wife and a handful of their friends. Now it didn’t appear to have got round to taking down its Halloween decorations. Through the darkness you could just make out a poster saying “Building a Brighter Future”. Except not round here. It already felt like the kind of party you want to leave the moment you arrive.
“Good evening everyone,” Cooper yelled, trying to spark a reaction from some of the 100 or so activists who had turned out for the party’s manifesto launch. “How many of you were members before 2015?” About 20 people put their hands up. “Now who became a member after 2015?” This time another 25 or so reluctantly raised their arms. “Keep your hands up if you joined after 2016.” Several arms went down. This continued until we got to 2019 and just three hands were left in their air. “That goes to show we’re a party on the up,” Cooper declared, her triumphalism laced with desperation.
After a short video of Jo Swinson getting on and off buses and meeting people, Matt Sanders, an earnest 1980s Blue Peter presenter impersonator, introduced himself as the local candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn. He might make a more effective canvasser if he learns his constituency boundaries. The club was in Holborn and St Pancras. Quite why the Lib Dems wanted to launch their manifesto in the seat being defended by Keir Starmer, the remainers’ brightest star, wasn’t entirely clear.
Then came Swinson herself. Early on in her campaign, the Lib Dem leader had appeared confident. A woman embracing her destiny. Now it seemed rather more of an effort. She wants to believe – hell, she spends 30 minutes saying affirmations to herself in the mirror every morning – but she just can’t maintain the fantasy any more. Reality keeps getting in the way.
Mostly she is just bewildered. There’s the opinion polls that show that voters like her less the more they see of her. Now it seems her best chance of a breakthrough is to keep her head down for the next three weeks. It wasn’t meant to be this way. After all, she had the best story to tell – providing you could overlook her voting record on austerity and tuition fees during the coalition government. Boris Johnson was a proven liar, in league with Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, who couldn’t even guarantee he wouldn’t deliver a no-deal Brexit at the end of 2020. Jeremy Corbyn was the secret Brexiter who refused to say how he would vote in a second referendum.
What more could the 48% who voted remain want than a party committed to keeping the UK in the EU? And yet the Lib Dems still can’t seem to make a breakthrough. And finally she couldn’t maintain the pretence any more. She used to insist that she was going to be the next prime minister. In her mind she had even been able to imagine herself walking into Downing Street and picking up the phone to Michel Barnier. The sheer joy of telling him that the last three and a half years had been a terrible nightmare.
She had said enough. She hadn’t said enough. This time the denial cracked and the words started tumbling out. She wasn’t going to be PM. She had never been going to be PM and she was sorry if anyone had believed her when she said she was. The best she could promise was that the Lib Dems might be able to win enough seats to deprive the Conservatives of an overall majority. And – whisper it softly – might do a deal with Labour to secure a second referendum.
The audience seemed perfectly happy with this. They had their Jo back. They had never fallen for her ego trip. No one ever votes Lib Dem because they hope to form a government. They vote Lib Dem to stop other parties from forming a government. But the truth didn’t seem to set Swinson free. Rather, it left her feeling deflated. She tried to talk up her mental health and childcare policies – the sort of issues that really matter to most people – but her heart wasn’t in it. She couldn’t even bring herself to talk up her plans to get everyone so stoned they might vote Lib Dem by accident. Another time.
As she left the stage, a solitary wind machine blew strips of silver foil over one corner of the room. A dismal end to an underwhelming half-hour set. One that neither offered the gravitas of a serious party nor the happening vibe of one about to break through. Just half an hour of their lives that no one would ever get back. Swinson peeled off her fixed grin. Sod the environment. Sod Brexit. The planet could die. She would be firing those nukes. The sooner the better.
John Crace’s new book, Decline and Fail: Read in Case of Political Apocalypse, is published by Guardian Faber. To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.
