Ed Davey’s leader’s speech on Tuesday was the climax of the Liberal Democrats conference in Bournemouth, but it was not, many party members agreed, its highlight. That garland belonged to Glee Club, the party’s bizarre political karaoke.
Glee Club is unique to the Lib Dems, and takes place on the final night of its conference. On Monday evening party faithful gathered around a piano at the Marriott hotel near the conference venue to sing along to well-known tunes.
The wheeze at Glee Club, however, is that the lyrics are bawdily reworked and politically charged, capturing the zany edge attributed to some Lib Dems that feeds the party’s image as a bastion of earnest political geeks.
Liberator, a radical liberal magazine loosely connected to the party, publishes the annual Glee Club song book.
RM Block
This year’s included an ode to David Cameron, sung to the tune of English Country Garden, referencing an old (and untrue) allegation about the former Tory leader’s fictitious exploits with a pig’s head while at university: “If your name is Cam/You’ve been amorous with ham/In an Oxford Country Garden.”
It also included a number poking fun at journalists. The Impartial Media Song was sung to the tune of The Wild Rover: “I’ve been a broadcaster for many a year/At Liberal leaders I happily sneer.”
That ditty also gave voice to recent Liberal Democrat complaints that the media give too much coverage to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, putting it way ahead in polls: “But Reform are different, they make a good splash/I’m happy to hear them and cover the fash.”
Yet it was Lib Dems themselves, from Davey and his front bench to ordinary activists on the hall floor, who spent much of the event talking up the threat from Farage, and the historic opportunity that may now be in front of the Lib Dems as UK politics moves away from the old Labour-Tory dominated system.
“We are the antidote to Reform,” Calum Miller, the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson, said. “They are a party that we need to take on, front and centre.”
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Meanwhile, party strategists believe their internal research proves British voters are on the cusp of a historic shift.
Polls have Reform at a third of the vote. The Lib Dems are up from just over 11 per cent at the 2024 election to between 14 and 16 per cent, not far behind Labour and a smidgen behind the Tories, both of which are in freefall.
Just over a year after winning a record 72 seats, the Lib Dems believe they can kick on and are now dreaming of government.
“[And] it’s not a given that we’d be in coalition,” said Monica Harding MP, the party’s international development spokesperson, hinting that the Lib Dems might not be satisfied as merely Labour’s partner to keep Reform out. “We may be doing something bigger.”
While the Glee Club was the Lib Dems’ Sunday night funstop, hours earlier at the conference polling guru John Curtice of Strathclyde University revelled in the role of killjoy. He slapped down lofty Lib Dem talk of paving a path to government on the backs of former Tory voters disaffected by that party’s lurch to the right.
Curtice argued that Davey’s party had already “maxed out” the strategy and was making a “fundamental mistake” by not targeting Labour voters to buttress its left flank. He argued that the party would be limited to about 90 seats under its strategy of appealing to voters on the moderate right.
Davey underlined the strategy in his conference speech on Tuesday, urging One Nation Tories to “come and talk to us”. Lib Dem strategists also privately dismissed Curtice’s criticism that the party isn’t trying hard enough to win over Labour voters. Yet 26 of the party’s top 30 target seats are held by Tories.
In advance of Davey’s big speech, Lib Dem members were upbeat about the party’s prospects.
“I would like to see us make clear that we are the Liberal alternative to Reform,” said Steve Wootton, originally from Scotland but now a Lib Dem councillor in Surrey.
“We need to set out a clear vision. We can’t be just a pressure group. Yes, we’re the party that will fix the church roof. But what else will we do? Unlike Labour, we must show that we would turn up to government with a plan.”
Jack Lovejoy, a party activist from Sussex, said he wanted the Lib Dem leader to “call out Farage’s shtick”. He also agreed the party needed to show it had the policies to win.
“There is nothing Lib Dems love more than a good working group. We have a wealth of detailed policies to fall back on. We have the know-how,” he said.
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Lovejoy complained the party doesn’t get “wall-to-wall coverage” like Farage’s party. So it must work harder, he said, to bring its message to voters’ doorsteps.
In his jaunty conference speech soon afterwards, Davey promised the Lib Dems would be the party that fixed Britain’s health service and also tackled climate change.
But the spectre of the Reform UK leader was never far away.
“Our United Kingdom,” Davey told his British audience. “Not Trump’s America. Not Farage’s Britain. We are in the battle for the future of the country.”
His speech ended, the confetti fell and the crowd erupted for their leader.
Now the hard work begins.
