General Election: Who are the Liberal Democrats - and what are their policies?
Four by-election wins since the 2019 election have buoyed the Liberal Democrats after the devastating blows of the coalition years and the councillor and MP losses that followed.
Tuesday 18 June 2024 18:19, UK
Hot off the heels of a strong result in the latest local elections, the Liberal Democrats will be hoping to snatch seats from the Blue Wall on 4 July.
Party leader Sir Ed Davey has made clear his plan to gain seats in the South East of England, where his campaign has had an overwhelming focus on cleaning up Britain's waterways.
As a former carer to his mother and now his disabled son, Sir Ed has also ensured health and social care is centre stage of the Lib Dem manifesto.
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Traditionally popular in the South West of England, parts of suburban London, and mid-Wales, Lib Dem voters tend to be middle-class and university-educated.
Four by-election wins since the 2019 election have buoyed the party after the devastating blows of the coalition years and the councillor and MP losses that followed.
What are the party's policies?
The Liberal Democrats launched their manifesto - "For a Fair Deal" - on Monday, 10 June. The headline pledges in the 114-page document are:
Free personal care for the elderly and disabled: on a universal basis - not a means-tested one, with £9bn ringfenced for the NHS and social care more widely
Rejoin the single market: with a longer-term aim of re-entering the EU. Policies also include granting full settled status to all EU citizens with pre-settled status
Nationalise water companies: banning bonuses for water company bosses and introducing a 16% sewage tax on all profits
Free school meals: for an extra 900,000 children living in poverty, with a view to extending provision to all primary school children if public finances allow
Scrapping first past the post: and replacing the current voting system with proportional representation
Who are the key figures?
Sir Ed Davey is the face of the Liberal Democrats this general election. Through a series of bizarre stunts, which have included falling off a paddleboard in the Lake District, he is hoping the headlines will help generate enough publicity to turn more seats yellow on 4 July.
He is the first Lib Dem leader since Paddy Ashdown in the 1990s to win four by-elections in a single parliament, taking all of them from the Conservatives.
There has been a relatively high turnover of leaders since Nick Clegg's coalition government with David Cameron's Conservatives came to an end in 2015.
Tim Farron served between 2015 and 2017 but decided to step down after his Christian faith became a divisive issue in relation to LGBTQ rights.
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He was succeeded by Sir Vince Cable, which made him the oldest leader of a political party since Sir Winston Churchill between 2017 and 2019.
Sir Vince's term saw the Lib Dems achieve their best election result since the 2010 coalition, gaining 15 seats in the European Parliament with their anti-Brexit policies.
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Nick Clegg was appointed party leader in 2007, just two years after he entered parliament. His predecessors Mr Ashdown and Charles Kennedy had steered the party to being the third largest in parliament.
This saw them as the obvious choice for a coalition when David Cameron failed to secure a majority for the Conservatives in 2010.
However, the Lib Dem's time in coalition and Mr Clegg's as deputy prime minister, was hugely damaging for the party, leading to them losing 48 of their 56 MPs, including Mr Clegg himself, in the 2017 snap election.
Where did the party come from?
What are now the Liberal Democrats were originally a merger between two reformist parties - the Liberals and the Social Democrats.
The Liberal Party was established in 1859, after overthrowing a Conservative minority government. Its leader and Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone was an influential force in British politics, establishing income tax and a system for parliamentary accountability.
The First World War divided the Liberals, however, and saw Labour sweep up the votes of women - who were given the vote in 1918 - and the new working classes.
The Liberals continued to decline after the Second World War, but made an impact in the 1970s by working with Labour on the UK referendum on membership of the European Community, and then by propping up their government with the Lib-Lab pact of 1977.
Advocates of the pact led a breakaway party - the Social Democratic Party (SDP) - to form in 1981, attracting both moderate Labour and Tory members.
After months-long negotiations, the SDP merged with the Liberals to form the Social and Liberal Democrats in 1988, led by Paddy Ashdown - who proved to be hugely popular and helped elevate the party's profile.
It was widely anticipated that Sir Tony Blair's New Labour would wipe out the Lib Dems, but instead, they won 46 seats in the 1997 election.
They later opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Following the rise and fall of Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems have re-established themselves within the political mainstream as the "anti-Brexit" party and want to return the UK to the single market - with a longer-term goal of full membership.
How have they fared in the polls?
The Lib Dems have polled fairly consistently around the 10% mark over the last parliament.
Their popularity peaked in the summer of 2022 at around 15%, when they won the Tiverton and Honiton by-election triggered by former Conservative MP Neil Parish's resignation over his watching porn in parliament.
The day Rishi Sunak called the general election on 22 May, a Deltapoll put the Lib Dems at 9%, with the party fluctuating between there and 10% during the campaign so far.
You can follow the latest from Sky News' poll tracker, which averages out the range of polls available, by clicking here.
As Sir Ed Davey has not taken part in a TV debate, unlike Labour and the Tories, the leaders' events have had no bearing on Lib Dem polling.
Nigel Farage's Reform UK have polled higher than the Lib Dems since the election was called.
But within the confines of the first past the post voting system, this does not mean this will translate into them becoming the third largest party in the next parliament over the Lib Dems.