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June 13, 2024 - 10:00am
There was a very funny character in The Fast Show called Colin Hunt. Clad in bright shirts and loud ties, and greatly enamoured of his own supposedly hilarious antics, he was a sharply-observed parody of the kind of exhaustingly “zany” funster, forever quoting Monty Python sketches, that many of us will have encountered.
I am increasingly reminded of Colin Hunt by the Liberal Democrats’ leader. Sir Ed Davey — a knight of the realm — has spent the first part of the general election campaign indulging himself in a series of self-consciously wacky escapades, from playing jenga with a giant tower of blue blocks (a subtle visual metaphor for Tory collapse, you see) to trying out the rides at Thorpe Park, to being photographed with a large model T-Rex in Wokingham (no, me neither). Yesterday, he was filmed failing to complete an aquatic obstacle course, ending up in the water but taking it in jolly good spirit, because he’s not a stuffed shirt, like those other fellows at Westminster!
One could be forgiven for raising a sceptical eyebrow at some of these shenanigans, and wondering whether there might be a certain amount of careful political positioning at work. After all, it is only a few months since Sir Ed was under considerable pressure related to his role in the historic Post Office Horizon scandal, at which point he was serving in the Coalition government. Victims of the scandal were highly critical of his failure to act, when he had responsibility for postal affairs from 2010 to 2012. Some pundits raised the possibility that he would have to resign the leadership.
There is also a broader issue relating to the nature of the Lib Dems. As a repository for protest votes, and as a party that notoriously takes an “all things to all men” approach to campaigning in different constituencies and parts of the country, it is crucial to their national strategy to avoid making too many concrete policy commitments.
Planning is perhaps the most obvious example. In affluent rural seats, Lib Dem campaigners often side with local Nimbys in blocking housing and infrastructure, promising small-c conservative homeowners that they will resist “over-development” and “protect the Green Belt”. Layla Moran, MP for Oxford West & Abingdon, has played a key role in blocking the long-planned and much-needed Abingdon reservoir.
But Lib Dems in large cities tend to be much more pro-building, as they seek to tap into the discontent of young professionals frustrated by the housing shortage. My local Lib Dem candidate, in our mostly urban and not especially prosperous seat on the east Kent coast, mentions homebuilding prominently on his website; a little to the west, amid the wealthy villages and rolling hills of Sussex, his party colleagues are silent on the subject.
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