WITH just eight MPs, down from the high watermark of 57 in 2010, including just one in Scotland, together with a mere one MEP and a small band of five MSPs, one might be forgiven for thinking those plucky Liberal Democrats are down and depressed.
But in a highly volatile political environment most of us have not seen in our lifetime, Tim Farron and his followers appeared remarkably upbeat beside the seaside in Brighton this week.
This is because they now have a new cause: to keep Britain in the European Union; and a new opportunity: to attract Labour moderates who feel totally aghast at the Corbyn takeover of their party. In other words, Mr Farron is pitching himself as the “heir to Blair”.
As the late great Charles Kennedy said in those sepia-tinted pre-coalition days: to be a Liberal Democrat is to be an eternal optimist.
The Lib Dems have had more new dawns than the planet Jupiter and Mr Farron is hopeful that another one is about to break.
In the wake of the June 23 vote, the yellow peril is now pushing hard on the line for a second EU referendum once the UK knows what the final Brexit deal Theresa May and her ministers will present to the British people.
Labour leadership challenger, Owen Smith, has made a similar proposition but no one, not even he probably, expects the Pontypridd MP to take the Labour crown from Jeremy Corbyn’s head.
So the Lib Dems have a unique policy, which they will push and get valuable airtime for; always difficult when you are the fourth party of British parliamentary politics.
The new opportunity will be provided for by the growing rifts in the two main UK parties; Labour will continue to be divided as another Corbyn win pushes the party ever leftwards and the Tories will increasingly split over the soft/hard Brexit question. Then, of course, there is Ukip and the possible[inevitable?] return of Nigel Farage to the leadership.
In this post-Iraq war era, it is unusual to hear Tony Blair’s name mentioned without a deal of venom being emitted. But for his domestic policies, the former Labour leader still has admirers and it is a canny bid by Mr Farron to seek to win them over; after all, TB did win three elections.
Already, the Lib Dem leader has seen, in the wake of the 2015 election and the Brexit vote, party membership shoot up by 80 per cent to nearly 80,000, and there have been a string of local council by-election wins, which Mr Farron believes are straws in the wind towards a great Liberal Democrat revival.
Optimism? Delusion? Foolishness? Given the volatility of politics, uncertainty is the only certainty.
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