While Tories fall apart, Lib Dems are here for the ride

IN THE spirit of our sound-bite age, I hereby summarise the main UK parties’ campaigns in a single word for each. For the Tories, it’s “disastrous”, for obvious reasons. For Labour, I would choose “dispiriting”, because Keir Starmer is cruising to victory without presenting a compelling vision of change. For Reform, “despicable”, because Nigel Farage has engaged in dog-whistle racism, most obviously with his assertion that Rishi Sunak “doesn’t understand our culture”. And for the Liberal Democrats? The word that springs to mind is “deranged”.

The Liberal Democrats’ campaign has been organised around a series of stunts performed by the party leader, Ed Davey. One moment, Davey is falling off a paddleboard. The next he is cycling, splay-legged, down a steep hill. The next, he is playing drums with a group of elderly people. It’s as if he is auditioning for the role of head clown in a care home rather than the role of leading a troubled country confronted by low productivity at home and storm clouds abroad.

To be fair, Davey did take a couple of hours off from the circus act to launch the party’s manifesto on Jun 10. But he was soon back in the ring – rushing from the manifesto launch to Thorpe Park to ride the Colossus Rollercoaster and the Alice in Wonderland revolving teacups. Even the great cynic HL Mencken would have been shocked by the lengths to which Davey has taken his remark that “politics is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage”.