The two largest parties in the House of Commons approach the 2025 autumn conference season with trepidation. Both Labour and the Conservatives are spooked by collapses in voter support and by the rise of Reform UK. Party anxiety, internal disagreements and even grassroots revolts seem possible at both of their conferences.
The third-largest party, the Liberal Democrats, have no such worries at all. They start their conference in Bournemouth this weekend in resilient mood. Having won 72 Commons seats in 2024 – the best result by any third party for a century – Sir Ed Davey’s party cemented those gains in the 2025 English local elections. While Labour and the Tories lost both votes and seats to Reform UK, the Lib Dems did the reverse, gaining seats and capturing three county councils. As a result, Sir Ed claimed the Lib Dems were now “the party of middle England”.
Well, maybe. What is undoubtedly true is that the Lib Dems have grounds for future confidence as well as past satisfaction. Yet the good electoral performances should not be exaggerated – the Lib Dems are averaging only 14% in the polls. They also mask serious challenges and dilemmas that confront the party more deeply than may appear at first sight. As the polling guru Sir John Curtice has recently pointed out, the Lib Dems are in fact less the party of middle England than a party of one side of the sharp divide in British politics opened up by Reform UK.
This reality – that the Lib Dems now consistently do best in remain-voting areas of Britain, while struggling in leave ones – redefines a familiar dilemma. Not for the first time in their history, the Lib Dems have to decide between offering a radical alternative to Labour or a more centrist alternative to the Conservatives. The difference now is that the first-past-the-post system is rewarding the Lib Dems in remain areas where the Tory vote has collapsed. Sir Ed is therefore pragmatically more focused on Lib-Con marginals, for three connected reasons: the need to defend so many formerly Tory seats captured in 2024; the fact that most post-2024 Lib Dem target seats are Tory-held; and the Tory drift to the right under Kemi Badenoch.
Many MPs and activists nevertheless feel this concentration on unhappy former Tory voters is to miss the volatility of the times, when there are votes to be won on the left too. Labour’s unpopularity has left many of its former voters looking for a new home. Sir Ed has leaned into this mood by boycotting the Trump visit state dinner, showing sympathy to Angela Rayner, complaining about media bias in favour of Nigel Farage, and speaking out over Gaza. Yet the issue will have to be faced more substantively in the Scottish and Welsh elections next spring and in the general election beyond that. Unless the Lib Dems also make these voters a compelling and costed economic and environmental offer, they could move elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the Conservative-Labour duopoly is now under greater challenge than at any time since the early 1980s. The Lib Dems are positioned to benefit. If Sir Ed reads it right, he could push his number of MPs closer to the 100 mark in 2028-29. If that happens, and there is a hung parliament, the Lib Dems may once again hold the balance of power, as they did in 2010. In that event, the decision between left and right will no longer be avoidable.
