Lib Dem chief Jo Swinson can upset the big boys’ apple cart

Under new party leader Jo Swinson, the remark ‘I don’t want to vote Lib Dems but ...’ may soon become a British mantra.

New Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson. Picture: Getty Images.

“It was pretty grim,” said Jo Swinson about the 2015 general election in which she and her husband, Duncan Hames, not only both lost their seats with a 16-month-old baby to care for, but the Liberal Democrats were almost wiped out. Her party seemed in its death throes.

No one wanted Nick Clegg any more. I interviewed him on his yellow bus the day before his defeat. He had no idea that his party was about to be eviscerated as he tucked into his croissant. But he should have seen it coming. After five years in coalition with the Conservatives it was hard to understand what the Lib Dems were for. If there had been another coalition they might have stopped a referendum on the EU but that didn’t seem important then. For two years they had dragged themselves along on single figures in the polls.

Now they are back, regularly polling more than 20 per cent in a four-way battle with the Tories, Labour and the Brexit Party. It’s easy to dismiss them as a single-issue party for Remainers who want a second referendum and to indulge in the odd protest vote; an irrelevance on the day Boris Johnson becomes prime minister.

They’re wrong. The East Dunbartonshire MP has the greatest chance of putting the Lib Dems in government since the “I agree with Nick” phenomenon of 2010.

MORE: Commentary - Boris must call snap poll | Johnson has 99 days to exit EU mire | Greg Sheridan writes Boris as PM is Churchillian drama

When the Lib Dems chose Tim Farron as their leader five years later they had a big problem. He was a committed Christian who refused to say whether gay sex was a sin and alienated the voters he needed to attract. Swinson is different. She stands for disenfranchised liberals against Johnson with his kippered libertarian tendencies and Jeremy Corbyn with his Morning Star socialism.

She is 39 and the first party leader born in the 1980s, she became politicised by the Body Shop, she embraces green issues and is relaxed about saying she smoked dope as an undergraduate. She could be Greta Thunberg’s older sister.

She’s also a feminist when the other main party leaders struggle to attract women’s votes. She spent her maternity leave with her second child writing a book called Equal Power: Gender Equality and How to Achieve It and was the first female MP to take her baby into the Commons during a debate.

While Corbyn and Johnson were heckled when they marched under rainbow banners during Pride week, she mixed easily with her multicoloured flower necklace. She comes from a generation that would never say “bumboys” as Johnson did in a 1998 column for The Daily Telegraph, or defend [Brexit Party MEP] Ann Widdecombe’s support for gay conversion therapy as [Brexit Party leader] Nigel Farage did last month. On race she is as easygoing as most of her generation. She stands for common sense rather than populism and would never be called racist or snobbish. Swinson could be dismissed as the metropolitan elite except she went to a state school in Scotland.

It’s true that she doesn’t have charisma. You rarely notice her when she slips into a room; one Tory MP told me that she was [Scottish Tory leader] “Ruth Davidson lite”. She prepares obsessively for debates and interviews and her time off is spent playing board games. Her headgirlishness is slightly too reminiscent of Theresa May but women in politics often feel they need to do more revision.

Despite her youth she has more experience of government than the other leaders, having been first elected at 25, and having worked in the coalition as a minister for almost three years, during which time she brought in shared parental leave.

The Lib Dems have already impressed Tony Blair and Swinson could win over more disaffected Tory and Labour MPs. I suspect she has more in common with Rory Stewart, Dominic Grieve, David Gauke and Justine Greening than they have with Jacob Rees-Mogg, Gavin Williamson and Iain Duncan Smith. Women on all sides of the House have congratulated her, including the Green Party’s Caroline Lucas. She has also attracted rants from the hard left and the hard right who recognise the threat.

It sounded ridiculous when she said, “So I stand before you today, not just as the leader of the Liberal Democrats but as a candidate for prime minister”, but she is right to be ambitious.

The Brecon & Radnorshire by-election is likely to add one MP to the current Lib Dem tally of 12 and there is money in her handbag, thanks to thousands of new members. If there is a snap election in the autumn she will win many Remain and student votes.

She may also win seats in the West Country where many voted yellow in the spring local elections. Even if there isn’t a general election until after Brexit, the party could still look like a socially progressive, modern alternative to its rivals. She can campaign on the Union as a Scot and on climate change, where the new prime minister looks flaky. She may hold the balance of power in a hung parliament, although she has refused to work with the present Tory or Labour leaders.

It is unlikely that she will ever make it to the steps of No 10 as Britain’s third female prime minister but she could play a key role in a future coalition government. Three years ago her party was about to be wheeled into the morgue; now it seems in rude health. It has a mission, it is united behind its new leader and it has popular causes. Blair’s remark that “I don’t want to vote Lib Dem but . . .” may soon be the mantra of the many.

The Times