Is any party having a ‘good war’ on Iran? After Donald Trump’s first strikes, I suggested that the Prime Minister had few appealing options. A week on and both the Tories and Reform now appear to be rowing back on their initial statements calling for greater UK involvement. One party which feels confident that they can benefit from their rivals’ missteps is the Liberal Democrats. Ahead of their Spring Conference starting tomorrow, Sir Ed Davey’s forces are planning to exploit the Iran issue on the doorstep by tying it to cost-of-living pressures around rising energy bills.
Drawing inspiration from Richard Curtis’s Christmas blockbuster, the party is hoping for what it calls a ‘Love Actually dividend’ at the ballot box, by depicting Davey as standing up to a bullying US President. Internal plans – seen by The Spectator – suggest Lib Dem veterans, led by Mark Pack, the chair of the elections committee, is keen to draw parallels between the Iran crisis and the events of 2003. ‘For the first time since the Iraq war’, reads one memo, ‘we have a chance to turn a distinctive and principled Liberal Democrat position on foreign affairs into significant election gains.’ It continues:
Many of the same voices who backed George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq, and even criticised Tony Blair for not going far enough, are once again lining up behind a US President taking Britain towards another dangerous conflict in the Middle East. Once again, ordinary families here at home will pay the price, with instability driving up energy costs and worsening the cost of living crisis. Tony Blair was derided as Bush’s poodle, now Farage and Badenoch are acting like Trump’s stooges.
Three groups of voters are being specifically targeted, as part of Davey’s aim to scoop up disillusioned ‘One Nation Tories’. The first are ‘patriotic pensioners’ who favour ‘traditional British values’. Repelled by Trump’s behaviour, they worry about energy costs. Then there are ‘Reluctant Reformers’ – disillusioned middle-aged voters, keen for change and open to arguments around local delivery. Finally, there are the famous ‘Surrey shufflers’: young professionals who have moved out from London to the Home Counties, whose interests and values make them prime target voters.
Davey has, privately, compared Badenoch’s stance on Iran to that of Sir Iain Duncan Smith on Iraq two decades ago.
The Lib Dem plan is dubbed ‘Operation Epsom Fury’ – a pun on Trump’s Iranian mission, inspired by a purported conversation with an elderly Epsom voter infuriated by watching Kemi Badenoch’s comments on the evening news. Davey has, privately, compared her stance on Iran to that of Sir Iain Duncan Smith two decades ago, when the-then Tory leader’s support for the Iraq conflict precluded his party from benefiting when the public mood changed.
One senior Lib Dem suggests that the Iranian strikes could be the difference on election night ‘between a bad night and a terrible night’ for the Tories. They cite YouGov polling which suggests that only 43 per cent of 2024 Conservatives support US military action against Iran – while 61 per cent define themselves as ‘anti-Trump’. After a series of by-election successes, the party hopes to use digital adverts and leaflets talking about the ‘Trump effect’ on bills to ram home a message depicting the ‘patriotic’ Lib Dems against the ‘Conservative/Reform alignment with Trump’.
Senior figures within Reform are often quick to dismiss claims that Nigel Farage’s support for Trump will hurt them. They reason that neither the Labour nor the Tories would attack a sitting US President, given both parties would have to work with him if elected. The Lib Dems, freed from such a constraint, have no such compunction in making hay out of the ongoing Iran crisis. There are potential echoes here of Suez, in which early bombast subsided in the lighter of wider considerations. With White House staff privately conceding that ‘We don’t what the fuck is going on’, the Lib Dems hope that they can be the unlikely winners of Trump’s war.
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