Nigel Farage’s Reform party is the election darling of the BBC, GB News and most of the private media empires. And Reform is indeed a key player in the Tories’ likely impending implosion. But an equally big election story is the renaissance of the Liberal Democrats, who are beginning to look like an agile centrist opposition to a Starmer landslide government, and a roadblock to any Tory revival—perhaps a permanent one, if a reconstituted Tory party goes fully Faragist after the election.
The Lib Dems’ headline share of the vote isn’t the thing to watch, although it may yet rise. The key point is that Lib Dem support is concentrated in a hundred or so parliamentary seats, mainly in the southwest of England and the home counties, plus parts of rural Scotland and Wales, where since the 19th century the Liberals have been the main alternative to the Tories. Labour didn’t supplant the Liberals in these areas during the early decades of democracy in the 20th century because of their lower rates of trade union penetration, and it was able to win elections without them, including the landslides of 1945, 1966 and 1997.
During the last long spell of Tory government, under Thatcher and Major, the Lib Dems steadily built their support in this “blue wall”, squeezing Labour with the same tactical vote argument—in Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system—that Labour had long used to squeeze the Lib Dems in the rest of the country. They won a relatively impressive 46 seats in the Blair landslide of 1997, and then peaked with 62 seats in Blair’s third election in 2005, winning a string of mainly university and suburban city seats by being a more palatable alternative to post-Iraq Labour than a right-wing Tory party.
Hence, when New Labour was finally done, in the 2010 election, the Tories couldn’t secure a majority on their own, even under the centrist Cameron, and were only able to take office by persuading Nick Clegg’s 57 Lib Dems to join 306 Tories in coalition. It was a fateful and nearly fatal step for the Lib Dems to take, and they were wiped out in 2015 when the Tories regained the entire “blue wall” in the face of a possible Labour government led by Ed Miliband.
Corbyn’s left-wing Labour of course made no in-roads in these Tory/Lib Dem marginal seats; they stayed solidly Tory in 2017 and 2019. But as the post-Brexit Tories go into freefall, many of them are swinging strongly back to the Lib Dems again, recreating the pattern of 1997.
This time, though, there’s a difference. The swing to the Lib Dems could ultimately prove stronger and more enduring than after 1997, extending across more of the south, because the Tories haven’t simply become jaded and temporarily unpopular, but have come to represent a vital threat to the social and economic aspirations of the entire “blue wall”. This is the legacy of Brexit—with its “fuck business” and extreme, nationalist mantras—which marks a revolution in the Tory relationship with southern England and its professional, business and graduate elites.
If the Tories were to swing back to the centre rapidly and dump Faragism, they might clean up once again in the non-metropolitan south, as and when Labour becomes unpopular. But the Farage and Reform movement, which is likely to take total charge of the discombobulated Tories after the election, goes in the opposite direction.
Farage’s populist and anti-elite appeal lies with the “red wall” of dispossessed coastal and deprived areas—hence his candidature in the Essex constituency of Clacton—especially in the east and north of England, which backed Brexit with large majorities and then supported the Tories under Johnson to “get Brexit done” in 2019. These constituencies will go largely Labour on 4th July, but will thereafter again be susceptible to Faragism with or without Farage personally.
Put sociologically, the combination of a Faragist Tory party in the Brexit heartlands and the revived Lib Dems in the south could fundamentally split the Tory coalition of 2019 in those parts of England which do not go Labour on election day, and could ultimately affect what happens to marginal seats that do go Labour.
So as Labour inevitably declines from an election high, the beneficiary in the south could be the Lib Dems, not the Faragist Tories. They could even easily start winning remaining Tory seats in the “blue wall” as they appeal to left and right with a strongly pro-European and pro-business message. This might be true also in the cities, although the Greens will complicate that story.
The Lib Dems, who have deep roots in local government, are good at tactical opposition; they won’t oppose Starmer’s Labour by following the Tories, and threatening southern England with Brexity populism. The Faragist Tories would then become a regional party contending mostly in the poorer parts of England. And rue the day the blue wall went orange.
