The Liberal Democrats have used their conference to unveil a £2bn plan to cut fuel duty, part of a series of policy proposals intended to tackle worries that not enough voters know what Ed Davey’s party stands for.
The proposal to cut fuel duty by 10p a litre for a fixed three-month period came as polling showed Lib Dem policies are less well known than those of Restore Britain, which only launched as a political party in February and has one MP – Rupert Lowe – to their 71.
Davey will set out the fuel duty idea, along with a reduction in the £3 cap on bus fares to £1 and a 10% reduction in rail fares, in his main speech to the event in Brighton on Tuesday.
Daisy Cooper, the party’s deputy leader and Treasury spokesperson, outlined in her speech on Sunday proposals to create economic growth through closer ties with Europe, part of an existing plan to try to rejoin the EU single market.
In a round of media interviews on Sunday morning, Davey pushed back against the idea that the Lib Dems, who are static in national polling at about 12%, risked being forgotten in the political conversation amid the rise in prominence of the likes of Reform UK and the Greens.
His party, Davey insisted, was making a genuine difference, and not just generating coverage without substance.
“I’m talking about real change, not just talking about the bubbles,” he told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show. “We have been winning council elections for eight years in a row. That has never happened before – it’s the most successful period that we’ve had.”
While there is no talk among Lib Dem MPs about anyone challenging Davey, some say they are frustrated that the party’s message is too vague and is not being heard by voters, a phenomenon highlighted in polling by More in Common, which was presented at the conference.
One key finding was widespread uncertainty among many voters about what the Lib Dems stood for. Just 39% said they had an idea of this, lower than that for every other major party, including Restore Britain, which was formed just over a year ago by Lowe after he split from Reform UK.
Other parts of the research showed that just 16% of voters said they had heard from the Lib Dems in recent months, against 66% for Reform, while 3% said they had seen Davey on social media, versus 20% for the Reform leader, Nigel Farage.
One Lib Dem MP told a conference fringe event at which the findings were presented that the party needed to expand the geographical and social range of its messaging.
The More in Common research found that the strongest predictor of support for the Lib Dems was a local branch of the upmarket bakery chain Gail’s, with the party doing five times as well in the 2024 general election in the least deprived parts of the country than the most deprived.
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“If we want to be a party of government, then we need to have a message for the whole country, not just parts of it,” said Tom Gordon, the MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, one of just four Lib Dem-held seats in the north of England, against 58 in the south.
Most of Davey’s MPs nonetheless note that he has delivered the party’s best election result for a century, and many expect this total to grow further at the next election even though they have flatlined in national polls, in part due to heavy tactical voting.
But some at the conference do privately say they would like a bit more. “The voters only seem to properly notice us once every four years, when there’s an election,” one longtime party activist said.
“It’s a bit like being curling at the Winter Olympics – the rest of the time we’re forgotten. It would be good if we had a more distinctive message, and that needs boldness.”
