'We need to go big' Party ready to take on Reform as its two old rivals crumble

With memories still fresh of 2019, when pre-election predictions of 200-plus seats were followed by a haul of precisely 11, the first rule of Liberal Democrat conference is that you never talk about numbers. Nonetheless, one thing is abundantly clear: this is a party thinking big.

- Peter Walker Senior political correspondent

That may sound anomalous when we are perhaps three years from an election and the Lib Dems already have 72 MPs, the biggest contingent in a century. But in a political era almost unparalleled in flux, there is an argument that they are responding to the chaos as effectively as anyone.

At the gathering in Bournemouth, MPs and officials were as good as unanimous on two fronts: first, that Ed Davey's party increasingly faces a head-to-head fight with Reform UK; and second, that this unlikely and emerging battle could provide the party with an unprecedented opportunity.

Such talk is necessarily freighted with caveats, including the very obvious one that the political landscape could change again. But it is based on data as well as hope.

The assumption is that the bulk of the 60-odd seats the Lib Dems won from the Conservatives in 2024 are relatively safe, partly because of a "Japanese knotweed" approach to embedding MPs but also because of the Tories' continued collapse under Kemi Badenoch.