Sir Ed Davey doesn’t mind acting the silly stunt. If it’s Tuesday, he’s on Windermere to demonstrate his absence of flair for paddleboarding by falling in multiple times. If it’s Wednesday, he’s mounting a bike to do a wobbly wheelie as he hurtles down a steep hill in Wales. If it’s Thursday, he’s careening down a waterslide in Somerset. “Have you got a wetsuit?” is the informal motto of Yellow Hammer 1, his campaign battlebus. I climbed aboard on Friday in the hope of seeing more comedic action from the stuntman. Visiting a target seat in the home counties, the Lib Dem leader plonks on a chef’s hat and joins a baking lesson for primary schoolchildren during which he confesses he is no Mary Berry. I protest to his team that, while quite charming, this gimmick is a bit tame. One of his aides suggests that he needs protecting from himself: “We’ve got to be careful not to get him injured.”
There is method in his malarkey. Much of the battle for the Lib Dems is persuading the national media to pay them any attention. If he has to play the good-for-a-laugh centrist dad to get himself on TV and in the newspapers, he reckons the pratfalls are a sacrifice worth making. You aren’t going to see Sir Keir Starmer on a paddleboard. Since no one thinks Sir Ed is going to be prime minister, he doesn’t have to do the gravitas thing. He also looks like a man who is enjoying himself, which is more than can be said for the stolid electioneering of his rivals.
The Lib Dems are due a bit of fun. Their track record at recent general elections has been mirthless, at least for them. They were crushed down to just eight seats in 2015 after the Con-Lib coalition, secured a paltry 12 in 2017 and a meagre 11 in 2019. Five years on, the Lib Dems are feeling chipper, hoping to take back areas they’ve held before in historic stomping grounds in the West Country and parts of Scotland as well as bashing into new territory in the “blue wall” by scalping Tories in southern England.
Sir Ed says there isn’t “a ceiling on our ambitions”, but there evidently is and it is self-imposed.........