Nine times out of 10 the Liberal Democrats’ campaign stunts are so on the nose that they are post-parody. Not that pundits and social media users don’t try. But you feel the Lib Dems would be perfectly within their rights to retort: “Yeah, but we’ve already DONE that gag, right? We booked the paddleboard. We took it to the creek. We made sure he was pictured without a paddle. Sorry, Madam Commentator, but you don’t get to make the joke and think you’re being funny. We own this thing from set-up to punchline. We ARE the joke.” And you know, you have to hand it to them. Anyway: the Liberal Democrat campaign for the 2024 general election. Tuesday was paddleboard, Wednesday was bike, as Ed Davey cycled headlong down a steep hill right into his own Welsh campaign launch. See what I mean – he’s already done the joke. What do you want me to say? It’s downhill from here? Davey on the skids? Christ on a bike???
For the other parties, being in an election with Lib Dems is a bit like being in Hamlet with a drunk Teletubby playing one of the minor roles. They appear to have absolutely zero interest in the text, even less in serious performance, and their every antic is dedicated to chewing as much of the scenery as possible. Sometimes literally. At every stage, they would like the audience to be asking: “OMG where are they now? How ker-razy are they being now?” I often feel the Lib Dems should release a retrospective election slogan, which would always be: “You know what? We didn’t get many MPs but we had a bloody good time out there, and you can’t say fairer than that.” If forced to release a contemporaneous campaign slogan, it would be “Yeah but you’re talking about us, aren’t you?” As indicated, it is unwritten electoral law that they have to do this. You are already sick of the two main parties’ election buzz phrases. The phrase you will most frequently hear the Lib Dems utter is “It’s a bit of fun but actually there’s a serious message behind it”. And I’m sure there is. Maybe the best way to illustrate this eternal truth of Lib Dem policy is to spend a significant wedge of the election budget creating a dense thicket of briar forest, then putting Davey in a suit of armour, and then having him literally hack his way through it to free a slumbering princess wearing a dress covered with the words “SERIOUS MESSAGE”. Even the party’s battlebus has, aside from the slogan, a straight-to-meme name printed deliberately on the side: Yellow Hammer 1. There’s been some discussion as to why it’s not just called Yellow Hammer – I imagine it’s because the Lib Dems have a fleet of these things. Yellow Hammer 2 is a carrier aircraft, Yellow Hammer 3 is a space rocket, Yellow Hammer 4 is a submarine, and Yellow Hammer 5 is a space station but doesn’t get that many plotlines, and could honestly be replaced with a laptop. Then again we are in an election campaign where you travel up, down and across the country but constantly find yourself thinking: this event could have been an email.
Which brings us back to the apparent Lib Dem conviction that it’s all about the stunts, or did it even happen? It’s a good question. For the Welsh launch in Knighton, BBC News ran with a split screen in which Davey was shown on mute one side, while a Lib Dem MP talked to the studio on Zoom from what might have been her spare bedroom. Or as a press release had it later: “We don’t need to be in a coalition to influence policy says Lib Dem MP.” That’s lucky. I mean, you weren’t incredible at influencing policy when you were in a coalition. Speaking of which … there are actually going to be days coming up when the eyes of all political engaged people will be trained with laserlike focus on Davey. But this former postal minister’s keenly awaited appearance before the Post Office inquiry isn’t till after the election – a piece of scheduling I imagine caused Davey to fall to his knees with gratitude when he clocked it. (He’d fall once involuntarily, and another six times for the cameras.) In fact, every time I see Sir Ed dicking around in a lake or on a bike or up a tree, I picture Alan Bates watching the scene on TV like Robert De Niro in Goodfellas watching the Morrie’s Wigs commercial in silent fury, then deciding he’s had enough and strangling Morrie with the phone cable until he agrees to pay up. That, in the end, does tend to be the trouble with politicians whose main USP is not taking themselves too seriously. They might not take you very seriously either, and – as Mr Bates discovered for years – sometimes it really, really matters that they do.