MARTHA GILL
In an Italian restaurant on the edge of Chippenham, a bustling Wiltshire market town and a key Lib Dem target, the manager is complaining to me about Brexit. He’s a British citizen, but is worried about staff who aren’t. Running costs are already going up, he says, and he predicts things will get worse. He is not sure who he will vote for in the election, but is interested to hear that one party is opposed to leaving the European Union. He thinks he has heard of them, but he isn’t sure what they stand for. Who are the Lib Dems, exactly?
Tim Farron’s party is supposed to be surging right now, uniquely standing up for the 48 per cent of Britons who found themselves on the wrong side of the referendum result. But instead it is struggling to stay at 10 per cent in the polls, while the Tories have soared to 50 in some surveys. In the locals, the Lib Dems actually lost 28 council seats, and it is rumoured the Conservatives are doing even better on the doorstep than in the data.