Keeping shape: Prospects for the Scottish Lib Dems

“Now this is not fair,” declared Willie Rennie, his sleeves rolled up. “Why have I got that bit and you’ve all got huge bits?” The Scottish Liberal Democrat leader’s audience was half a dozen toddlers he’d been making homemade Play-doh with on a campaign visit to an Edinburgh nursery, though it rather neatly summed up the sentiment of this General Election campaign.

Rennie is renowned for his affable nature. Even dire poll predictions – there have been suggestions the party, tarred by their part in Britain’s first coalition since the Second World War, face returning just one of their roster of 11 MPs north of the border – do little to narrow the trademark grin often found plastered across his face. Despite his insistence that there is a “route to victory in every single one”, few expect all 11 to be sitting on the green benches after May 7.

More money has been raised than ever before to assist in the fight, Rennie, speaking to Holyrood at the mid-point of the campaign, said. Really? A few weeks earlier his campaign chief told their spring conference he was less than halfway to the magic £2m mark.

"I would sell my grandmother for more money – and she's dead," former Liberal leader Paddy Ashdown told delegates in Aberdeen as he urged them to open their wallets and say "Dear Paddy Ashdown, please help yourself".

“I’m not sure that was the annual report of our finances,” laughed Rennie. “That was a means to raise more money for the campaign, so you wait for our annual accounts to come out before you’ll get a true representation.” 

Their strategy, on the surface, has at least appeared realistic. Talk has been confined to the 11 seats they currently hold. “We’ve got sufficient resources and people to be able to do the 11 seats – we can manage that,” said Rennie. 
 
“We’ve very good at winning against the odds. The fact that we’ve got 11 Liberal Democrats in Scotland when the voting system wouldn’t lend itself towards that, against all the odds we managed to win those places. So we’ve done it before, we know how to do it, and we’ll do it again.”

To do so, though, may require a bit of help. Tactical voting will play a part in the outcome, he argued, suggesting that people will vote in a “smart and intelligent way” to make sure the result is one they wish. Would he encourage tactical voting on the doorsteps? “Yeah, I do say to people you’ve got a straight choice here, so yes we are encouraging people to think very smartly about how they cast their vote, I think that’s important.” 

Two days after we spoke, Nick Clegg travelled north to cement the message by urging soft Tory and Labour voters to “lend” the Lib Dems their vote to keep the SNP out. A Guardian/ICM poll published earlier this week even suggested Tory tactical votes could save the deputy prime minister in his own constituency of Sheffield Hallam.

“What they’ve got in their favour is that most of them are standing in ‘No’ voting and quite heavy ‘No’ voting constituencies [in the referendum],” Mark Diffley, research director for Ipsos MORI Scotland, explained. “And also, they’re often more diverse fights so they may benefit from Tories and even Labour voters lending them their support, which may help them over the line in one or two [races]. 

“I suspect that’s what accounts for their optimism, apart from a bit of blind faith that all parties have of course at this sort of time.”

The Scottish Conservative Party haven’t been getting the message, though, instead making a play for disaffected Lib Dem voters. “By pretending they can win in seats that they haven’t won for 30 years, where the bookies have them as rank outsiders, I think [it] is irresponsible the way that they’re behaving,” claimed Rennie. 

Voters concerned about the future of the UK will be left “confused” listening to the Tories and “let down if the Conservatives do get in the way in those contests”, he warned. “That’s why I’ve appealed to them just to back off and stop pretending because it is just not possible.

“I understand why Ruth [Davidson] wants to get every single vote that she can, if she wants every vote to count, she should back voting reform, that’s the best way of making sure every vote counts. With the voting system we’ve got, this is the best way of keeping the United Kingdom together.”