The best Lib Dems can hope for? To stop being patronised | Martin Kettle

The party is bubbling with optimism, but after its 2015 wipeout it’s not about to overturn the status quo in this election

There is a gaping Emmanuel Macron-shaped hole in British electoral politics, but no one to fill it. When I wrote this recently, I got a cheerfully indignant email from a Liberal Democrat ex-MP. How could I dismiss Tim Farron’s claims so easily, he complained. Like Macron, he said, Farron was young, liberal, progressive and pro-Europe. And in this general election Farron is campaigning on Brexit, “the overriding national and international issue” of the day, “rather than on mending pavements and saving post offices”. Watch this space, he wrote.

Is he right to be optimistic? It’s certainly true that the mood of the Liberal Democrats is bubbling as the 2017 general election gets under way. Farron is fighting a genial and feisty street campaign among real voters, as he showed during a visit to Oxford West this week. When the results of yesterday’slocal elections are digested, the party is likely to be even more chipper.

In 2015, the electorate left the Lib Dems out cold on the canvas. Merely to recover those losses would be a triumph

Related: Tories attack Labour over inheritance tax and spending plans

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