For the first weeks of the election, Liberal Democrats leader Sir Ed Davey seemed to be ploughing his happy furrow. He leapt, quite literally, into a series of silly photoshoots — paddle boarding, careening down slides — as well as releasing a moving personal video about caring for his disabled son. It has perhaps not unleashed the Cleggmania of 2010, but it has reset the party’s image with a quite genuine sense of warm feelings for the leader. Now, however, they have to convert that into the hard part of the campaign.

In the last two elections, the Lib Dems had a quite clear message. They were the party of “Continuity Remain”, the only major party committed to reversing Brexit. This approach was distinctive, but it ultimately failed. They never recovered from the post-Coalition collapse, and went backwards last time, winning just 11 seats. Now, however, they sense opportunity.

The collapse of the Tories seems to bode well for the party. Opinion polls have them set to pick up dozens of seats, sweeping through traditional bastions of Conservative Party votes in the Home Counties. With a good night, and SNP losing out to Labour, the party could end up with around 50 MPs and back to third-biggest in the Commons. In the most dramatic predictions, they might even take more than the Tories.

What is less clear is what the Lib Dems might do with this increased presence. Tomorrow they will reportedly launch their manifesto, a curious document considering how unlikely it is they will ever implement any policies. The policies teased so far include signing up to and extending the EU youth mobility scheme — allowing greater freedom of movement for under-35s — and the creation of three new national parks. They’ve also promised free at-home care for the elderly and higher wages for care workers, partly funded by taxing unearned income at higher levels.

Taken together, it becomes a sort of middle-class populism: trumpeting closer relations with the EU to retain that Remainerish shine, with a focus on some of the Tories’ failings on public services, alongside a large dose of environmental niceness. There are a few other crowd-pleasing gambits too, such as forcing ten Premier League matches a year to be on free TV. All together, it amounts less to an appeal to the bloke in the pub, more the sort of policies the middle-aged man in the wine bar would heartily expound upon.

In the face of a Labour landslide, none of this will matter much. Sir Keir Starmer’s party will not need or want to cut a deal with them. It may, however, lay the groundwork for future Lib Dem progress if politics becomes more volatile. The party alienated much of its base during the Coalition and particularly upset the young with its U-turn on tuition fees. Now, however, it finds itself back in a fertile niche.

There is a bloc of better-off, pro-European voters who might once have been solid Tories yet now find the brand repugnant. Some will turn to Labour this time round but are likely to grow disaffected after a term or two of Starmer. A smart Lib Dem party could start picking these voters up, extending its grip through the suburban fringe.

Understanding what the Lib Dems stand for has been a long-running question in British politics. They’ve often thrived off meaning different things in different places, or becoming the home of opportunist NIMBYism. Picking a side, as they did in 2010, was always a threat, and it perhaps played out as expected. Now, with another Labour surge and the Tories in trouble, opportunities abound. So far, Davey’s japes have garnered them wider notice. The manifesto will show us more about what they intend to do with it, and how to capitalise on the chaos. That is what we should pay attention to.

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John Oxley is a corporate strategist and political commentator. His Substack is Joxley Writes.

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