The Liberal Democrat Conference 2026 was the only remaining major party conference to head to a traditional seaside haunt this year.  However, for all the fun of the seaside, all is not ship-shape in the Liberal Democrats.

The first clue was the glaring emergency orange of the main stage decor.  Gone were the subtle mustard hues of yesteryear and even the contrasting yellows, blacks and greys which you would once find dressing the podium.

The Lib Dems have gone all-in on embracing the luminous orange of their famous diamond signs.  This is not a party that thinks things are going well.  It is a party desperate to draw attention to itself as others, from the Greens to Reform, capture the headlines.

Is there anybody there?

Brighton ‘26 was like Bournemouth ’25: characterised by cavernous spaces and relatively few delegates.  There seemed to be more stands this year.  However, there were noticeably far fewer commercial exhibitors and lobbyists.  It was even possible for late bookers to get a room in the conference hotel, something unheard of at most party-political conferences.

Inside the rather tired interior of the Brighton Centre, the Social Liberal Forum, a party pressure group, summed up the mood with a sign which asked: “Is there anybody there?”   A good question it seems.  Alas, the answer there came there none for long periods in that upper exhibition space.

It did start to fill out on the Monday with Business Day, which seemed to bring in a large banqueting room full of delegates, but these are those seeking engagement or commercial opportunities rather than committed supporters.  The contrast with massed ranks of the self-proclaimed “People’s Army” at Reform UK could not have been starker.

Speaking into the void

Even the speeches struggled to whet the appetite of this famously campaign-orientated party.  The headline act was Sir Ed Davey MP, the party leader, waving his arms around in a speech which echoed some of the language and rhythms of Michael Portillo’s now legendary and infamous SAS speech in the dying days of 1990s Thatcherism.

While Sir Ed’s arms flailed like some weather-ravaged wind farm, the party faithful remained relatively impassive.  Delegates were certainly not driven to the fervour generated by leaders of old such as Paddy Ashdown or David Steel.

The Liberal Democrats love a good conference motion, especially as one of the advantages of membership of this super-democratic party is that anybody can participate in creating, amending or debating them.  However, where policy pledges were made, they were somewhat scuppered by the fact that no one outside Brighton was really paying attention.  While this might be to the relief of party grandees on some whackier policy areas; given conference is that one moment when the Lib Dems can get mainstream coverage, it is not ideal.  The impressive Max Wilkinson MP pledged an Online Crime Tax to pay for an eponymous big tech police unit. However, the media were far more interested in the contemporaneous announcement of Reform UK’s latest Welsh Senedd group leader.

Rejoining the EU too was more than a strong theme.  More like the leading tenet of an ancient religion.  That internet-famous viral social media “one trick” to beat the UK’s economic blues.  Whatever your view on the EU and the UK’s Brexit referendum, it seems risible that the party could attach such totemic weight to ‘rejoin’.  But it was everywhere.  Europe Spokesperson Al Pinkerton told a half-empty fringe it would restore UK trade.  In his keynote speech Ed Davey claimed it would allow for tax cuts.  A policy as far removed from political reality and the bond markets as anything a right-wing populist or even Liz Truss could have dreamt up.  Last time she was at a Lib Dem conference in Brighton she was moving a motion to abolish the Queen.  She lost.

A coup in the offing?

There were some bright points however.  Deputy Leader and Shadow Treasury spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP is becoming a consummate orator. Her speech on enterprise and innovation, which we were delighted to note referenced a Barndoor Strategy client, was in a different league.

No wonder there are open grumblings from amongst the Lib Dems’ 72 MPs that they could do better.  This isn’t the normal whinging of politicians, who, like actors, all think they could do a better job of the lead role.  It’s a wary, if not weary, realisation that this is a party unperforming and punching well below the weight of its parliamentary cohort.

This critique of Davey was not reserved to MPs in the corners of the surprisingly empty conference bar. Devon’s County Council’s leader, Councillor Julian Brazil told the BBC exactly what he thought: “sleepwalking into irrelevance” was his view.   A more significant intervention than many may realise.  Brazil was a Lib Dem staffer when Sir Ed was plain old Ed Davey MP back in the late 1990s.  After that, he was a senior party organiser.  He and others know the Liberal Democrat party inside out and they know there is a serious problem.

The electoral news has also been uncharacteristically grim for the Lib Dems.  Regional elections in Scotland and Wales have seen the Liberal Democrats overhauled by Reform as the new kid on the block and prime challenger to Labour and nationalist orthodoxy.

The arrival of the Greens, led by charismatic ex-Lib Dem Zac Polanski, has also been a troubling development.  Whilst that movement might have reached its peak for the time being, the inability to win a by-election, a Lib Dem mainstay for many a year, has clearly had its effect on morale.

Liberal Democrat conference is unique in that not only does it give delegates opportunities to hold the pen on policy through votes on motions; but it has always featured prominent training sessions for party activists.  So much so, that these exclusive training sessions dominated the sparse fringe agenda on the Monday afternoon. Lib Dems might rightly consider themselves to be the UK’s foremost campaigners.  But where were the events for everybody else?

As in 2025, the abiding feeling at this Lib Dem conference was of a party still finding its feet.  However, this year there was an even more pronounced sense that it could, and indeed must, do better.  Unlike Labour or the Conservatives, what seems to be lacking is the ruthlessness necessary to challenge Davey’s leadership.  Where are the men in grey suits?  Or should that be clipboard-wielding activists in grey tracksuits?

Unless and until the Lib Dems up their game, they risk being marginalised in the new political landscape of big personalities – and that will leave their ambitions stuck on clinging to the seats they have, rather than building on their best-ever election results in 2024 and becoming the kingmakers Ed Davey is clearly so desperate for them to be.

Barndoor Strategy

September 2026