Tim Farron can still reach out to the Lib Dems’ lost tribe, the Liberal Brexiters – The Guardian

Tim Farron recognised the divisions in his party when he told Andrew Mar he is a bit of a Eurosceptic Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

I dont think Im the only Liberal Democrat to have identified unreasonable optimism as one of the characteristics of my own party. In some senses its built in: during the bad times lets face it, quite a lot of the time those not optimistic enough go off and do something else.

There are positives and negatives about this, of course. Serious optimism gives you amazing resilience. But it can get in the way of self-criticism when things are not going quite right.

The Lib Dems went into the local and general election campaigns believing that the other main parties (apart from Ukip, apparently) were divided about Brexit. They argued that they were riding a burgeoning wave of anti-Brexit sentiment.

It is certainly true that remainers now have increasing energy behind them, as research into Twitter trends revealed last week. It is also true that the Lib Dems have reached a record membership, pushing over the 100,000 mark in the last month and it seems likely that the overwhelming majority of those are remainers. They will be cheered by the announcement yesterday of commitment to a second referendum on the Brexit deal in the Lib Dem manifesto.

The trouble is, the electorate as a whole does not seem to have responded yet. The Lib Dems slipped back a little in seats won during the council elections (though their vote share went up). The recently defined re-leavers category the 23% who voted remain but want to respect the vote, according to a YouGov survey suggests that not the whole 48% will be tempted to vote Lib Dem this time.

Luckily for the Lib Dems if they see it like this there is a clue about what to do next. This lies in an awkward, unheralded group, an unresearched, unrecognised corner of the political taxonomy: the Liberal Brexiters.

It hasnt suited academics or political anoraks to track these, so how do we know they are there? The obvious evidence is that so many former Liberal strongholds including Cornwall, Devon, parts of west Wales and parts of Lancashire voted strongly for Brexit. They therefore hold an unpredictable key to a Liberal revival, and especially in the west.

There has always been a sense of rugged independence in these places areas with high self-employment rates, which used traditionally to vote Liberal.

There are also, undoubtedly, Liberal-minded people who voted to leave the EU not because they were convinced by Boriss bluster or the 350m but because they have an instinctive dislike of large supranational bureaucracies (and national ones too), however they might approve of their internationalist purpose.

So here is the problem for the Lib Dems: they are divided, not among their current members, but between their current voters and an important section of their traditional ones. They are a broad church, like all political ideologies. But to achieve the breakthrough (or breakback) they need, they will have to find ways of holding this division together.

Tim Farron clearly recognised this dilemma himself when he told Andrew Marr he was, as he put it, a bit of a Eurosceptic. This is partly because he realises, perhaps more than others in his party, the need to reach out to Liberal Brexiters; partly because his own constituency is in a leave area; and partly because he regards liberalism, as he told Marr, as an ideology that challenges people in power the EU, in government, in councils.

The reason the Liberal Brexiters provide a somewhat unwelcome clue is that the party somehow needs to articulate what unites the Lib Dems and this group: a scepticism about large, over-mighty institutions, which is part of the Liberal purpose.

There are mutterings in the Lib Dem camp from those fearing an identical rerun of the referendum campaign, which was over-technocratic, under-emotional and not noticeably successful.

None of this suggests that Farron should row back from his position on Brexit. But it does suggest that he needs to find other grounds in common with the Liberal Brexiters.

If he can wriggle out of the Brexit dialogue of the deaf between those who defend the purpose of our institutions (the technocrats) and those who attack the way they work in practice (the radicals) he can apply some of that radicalism to those other institutions nearer home that work in theory but not in practice: the housing market, Southern Rail, the energy market and, especially, the banks.

If the 2015 election taught the Lib Dems anything, it is that centrism needs to be driven by a crusading fervour for change. Those who want an effective Liberal opposition will therefore hope Farron can as he promises that the British people will have have a final say on any deal speak effectively to those old curmudgeons, the Liberal Brexiters.

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Tim Farron can still reach out to the Lib Dems' lost tribe, the Liberal Brexiters - The Guardian