Sir Ed Davey could easily boost the Lib Dems’ popularity by making the most of Johnson’s incompetence

Editorial: Sir Ed can make progress enough in Sir Keir Starmer’s slipstream. All he really needs to do is to remind the voters that the Lib Dems are still around and we should all share their liberal values

Given her lively campaign, charisma and the sheer scale of the challenges facing the Liberal Democrats, it was a little surprising that Layla Moran didn’t poll more impressively in the party’s leadership election. Plainly, even as they languish in the polls and subsist with minimal Commons representation, and with decidedly poor immediate prospects, the party membership still didn’t feel like taking a chance on Ms Moran. The more depressing question for the Liberal Democrat Party is why only 57.6 per cent of the 114,000 or so of its membership could be bothered to cast a ballot for either candidate. Surely even they were not overcome by the apparent futility of it all?

Sir Ed Davey, who may have been thought to be the safer pair of hands, made it clear within moments of inheriting the mantle of Gladstone and Lloyd George that his party is not going to have a quiet life with him in charge. He chose to be blunt, and honest, rather than emollient: “The truth is voters don’t believe that the Liberal Democrats want to help ordinary people get on in life. Voters don’t believe we share their values. And voters don’t believe we are on the side of people like them...”

Accurate as that might be, it does beg some awkward questions. For if the Lib Dems’ values are so out of touch with modern Brexity Britain, does that mean that the party needs to change its values, or try to persuade at least some of the electorate to change their views? If the former, how far, then, will Sir Ed lead the Liberal Democrats away from their traditional but electorally unpromising core beliefs? It calls to mind the old quip made by Groucho Marx: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them... well, I have others”.