The Liberal Democrats misread the political mood. Yet perhaps not all is lost | Martin Kettle

Though they overplayed their hand on Brexit, and Jo Swinson overreached with her No 10 claim, there’s time for a recovery

It used to be an article of faith among Liberal Democrats that general election campaigns would always mean good news for their party. The party’s axiom was that, once balanced election time media reporting rules kicked in, they would get a fairer crack of the whip and increase their support. For many years the facts bore this out. In every election from 1992 to 2015, the Lib Dems saw their share of support increase over the course of the campaign. Leaders including Paddy Ashdown, Charles Kennedy and Nick Clegg became bigger national figures in this way.

That is no longer true. The 2017 election was the first since 1987 in which the Lib Dems did worse on polling day than they were doing when the campaign began. An initial average poll rating of 11% in that election became an actual vote of 7.4% when the votes were cast. The Lib Dem postmortem concluded that the election had come too soon after the post-coalition drubbing of 2015, and that Tim Farron had proved a useless leader.

Events may shift the numbers. But things could get worse for the party, not just better

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