The most popular party leader in Britain isn’t who you think it is

As parts of the country prepare to vote in the first ballot since the general election, Andrew Grice says one person has single-handedly turned it into a five-horse race

Quiz question: who is the UK’s most popular party leader? Is it Nigel Farage? No – a lot of people don’t like him. Keir Starmer, after his recent good run on foreign affairs? No. Kemi Badenoch? Come off it.

The answer is Ed Davey.

In the most recent opinion polls, the Liberal Democrat leader’s personal ratings outscore those of his Labour, Reform UK and Conservative counterparts. Not that you would know it from most of the press releases pumped out by polling companies or the way their surveys are reported by the media.

Similarly, it’s a safe bet the Lib Dems will make gains at tomorrow’s council elections in England and that they will remain largely below the public’s radar. Gains for Farage, heavy Tory losses and possibly a bad night for Labour will make more sexy headlines.

The Lib Dems, who became the largest third party in parliament for 100 years last year when they won 72 seats, quietly hope to make further inroads into the traditionally Tory blue wall and to end up controlling more councils than the Tories. Some polls put the Lib Dems in first place in the south outside London.

Badenoch is making Davey’s task easier. The Tories are so spooked by Farage that they rarely appeal to the blue wall, even though any route back from the wilderness would surely run through the 60 seats they lost to the Lib Dems last year.

Lib Dem MPs tell me there is little sign of the Tories recovering in their once-impregnable heartlands, or disenchantment with Starmer’s government driving former Tories back into Badenoch’s arms. Indeed, the Lib Dems say they have their eyes on another 20 Tory constituencies.

The Lib Dems, whose playbook as a grassroots protest party is admired by Farage, have usually built a base in local elections and used that to make parliamentary seats winnable. After last year’s spectacular gains, the process will be reversed, with parliamentary gains becoming a platform for an advance on local authorities.

Davey’s sights have widened to include Labour. One Lib Dem insider describes the mood on Middle England doorsteps as “a plague on both your houses” – unusually, with both the government and official opposition unpopular at the same time.

The Lib Dems have set up a unit to attack Labour – a far cry from the non-aggression pact Starmer and Davey quietly agreed before last July’s election after bonding at a secret dinner that I revealed.

In Labour’s eyes, the “constructive opposition” Davey promised after the election has been a lot more oppositionist than constructive. “Sheer opportunism,” snapped one senior Labour figure. The Lib Dems opposed means-testing the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance; the hike in employers’ national insurance; the “family farms tax”; and imposing VAT on private schools. The Lib Dems attack Labour from the right, not from the left, as during the Blair-Brown era; it seems Davey’s top priority is to hold on to disillusioned former Tory voters rather than win votes in Labour-held seats his party is unlikely to capture.

Like the Tories, Labour seems obsessed with Farage but some senior Labour figures suspect it is wrong to ignore the Lib Dems and the Green Party. More of the 2024 Labour voters who say they will back another party tomorrow will switch to the Lib Dems (28 per cent) than Reform (26 per cent), according to More in Common.

Davey’s silly stunts for the cameras don’t always work. Even he sometimes has doubts about them, and some Lib Dems cringed at his riding a child’s hobby horse (to emphasise a two-horse race between the Lib Dems and Tories in the home counties). But they grab people’s attention, and Davey then raises serious issues such as social care.

Some Labour MPs privately sympathise with Davey’s call for the UK to rejoin the EU customs union, and for Starmer to take a much tougher line against Donald Trump, which will strike a chord with many voters at a time when the much-vaunted US-UK trade deal still hasn’t happened. Davey is feeling vindicated following the Liberals’ remarkable comeback in Canada’s election after Mark Carney stood up to the bullying US president.

Davey has a free hit to call Trump “an unreliable ally” while Starmer does not, believing the UK would pay a price if he started to criticise him. The Lib Dem leader has the luxury of opposition and is revelling in it.

Although Farage will bask in warm headlines after tomorrow’s local elections, the results will also tell another story: the first time five parties have been in the game in a local contest, with the Greens also in the frame. The combined Labour and Tory share of the vote, at 44 per cent in the latest opinion polls, has plummeted to a historic low.

Starmer and Badenoch have something else in common: in not addressing the Lib Dem threat, they make it easier for voters to switch to Davey’s party. Both hope to squeeze the Lib Dems at the next general election, but that will be harder in an era of five-party politics. So they ignore the Lib Dem “yellow peril” at their own peril.