They're looking for a home' Ed Davey works to woo disgruntled Tory voters

Days before the local elections, with Kemi Badenoch demanding apologies over gender identity and Nigel Farage complaining about mental illness diagnoses, Ed Davey is quietly getting on with what he perhaps does best: having fun.

- Peter Walker Senior political correspondent

In a converted shed near Stratford-upon-Avon, the Lib Dem leader is joking with photographers as he makes chocolate truffles alongside Manuela Perteghella, his party's MP for the formerly true-blue constituency.

Warwickshire county council is also about as Conservative as it gets, with 41 Tory councillors out of 57. But Lib Dem activists say it could move into no overall control.

"I think it feels even better than the general election," Davey says, truffles cooling in a fridge before he heads off for some door-knocking. And that, remember, was the Lib Dems' best general election for a century, in which the party won 72 seats, mostly from the Conservatives.

With much of the focus before Thursday's local elections on Reform's rise, the Lib Dems have been, as one party strategist called it, just "getting on with the job".

Part of this is the sheer graft so admired by Farage that he wants it to be a model for Reform, with 500,000 doors knocked on during March and a million leaflets delivered before election spending limits kicked in.