Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson’s hopes of taking the UK’s third-largest party to an unlikely victory appear to have been dashed, squeezed between Boris Johnson’s Conservatives and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour.
Most pollsters predict that even on a very good night on December 12, the Lib Dems will do well to increase their seat share in the House of Commons from 19 to 40. The Financial Times’ poll tracker has the party on just 15 per cent.
Buoyed by high profile defections of MPs from the Conservative and Labour parties as the Brexit impasse became a full-blown political crisis, Lib Dems hopes are pinned on winning over moderate Tory and Labour voters crying out for a centrist party.
Ms Swinson kicked off the Lib Dem election campaign by suggesting she stood a real chance of being prime minister — a big claim given the first-past-the post voting system makes it almost impossible for a third party to break through.
But there are also concerns that under her fledgling stewardship — the 39-year-old from Glasgow became leader in July — the party has committed a tactical error by ditching its support for a second EU referendum in favour of a straightforward promise to scrap Brexit by revoking the Article 50 exit process. [...]
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