Brighton 2024 numbers game: a sign of the times at the Lib Dems’ conference

YOU may be aware that the Liberal Democrats won 72 seats at the general election in July, but just in case you weren’t the conference centre in Brighton this week was duly plastered with the number at every corner.

It was slipped into every speech, and slipped into every corridor chat.

For good measure, the information desk had “72” illuminated in light bulbs, see above.

After a while it got a little tiring to hear the same joke, that there are sooo many Lib Dem MPs now that members don’t always know if they are standing next to one in the bar queue for a drink.

But maybe they might be forgiven just this once for milking the moment.

Lib Dem conference is not always like this, and basking in the south coast sunshine, it was a week in which they were ready to enjoy parliamentary victories in blue wall battles against the Tories.

The question of “what next” and “can you do the same in the red wall” was rather left for another day.

Win, lose or draw, the party faithful – which has had yo-yoing representation over the last 20 years in their own political chamber – attends without fail. Unlike other parties, it’s often been hard to tease out any policy differences among these chums, and this was the case again as they headed en masse for a convivial reunion lunch at the Pizza Express in the Brighton Lanes.

They’ve been to the same inoffensive chain together so often, they don’t even need to look at the menu any more. Perhaps, the extent of an internal rebellion might be to suggest going to Zizzi or Fatto a Mano instead.

There are those who might say the party, its members, and its choice of pizza crust, need a bit more oomph.

But they are tired of any cliches about simply being a place for protest votes, this time against the doomed Tories.

Their answer to any question about the struggle for relevance is to say they have, you knew it already, 72 MPs.

Oh – and that they should now be considered more radical on winter fuel payments and child hunger than Labour.

Still, it’s a slight paradox, this immediate outrage at any comment that suggests they need to be more exciting, clashing as it does with their own leader Ed Davey indicating that they need to be just that with his own curious timetable. The latest in his familiar, albeit successful, attention-seeking stunts was to arrive across the waves on a jet ski and conduct a BBC interview while riding a loopy pier rollercoaster.