Liberal Democrat comeback 'not inevitable' admits Tim Farron

The Liberal Democrats “may never” return to the size of representation in the Commons that they had after the 2005 and 2010 elections, Tim Farron has said.

The party saw its number of MPs slashed from almost 60 to eight in last May’s general election, and in Scotland

In an interview with The Times, Farron said he did not know how long it would take the Lib Dems to bounce back.

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He said: “Comebacks can take a long time. They may never happen, or they can be quite speedy and swift.”

Despite the scale of the challenge, Farron was upbeat about the possibility of making progress quickly.

“There is no inevitability about the speed or scale of our comeback, but I just observe that [in] 1979 we got 11 seats and a share of the vote not dissimilar to the one we’ve just got and were a lot further away from winning any other seats than we were this time around. Four years later, we recorded the highest share of the vote our party’s got since the early 1920s.”

He also looked to the success of Justin Trudeau, the new Liberal prime minister in Canada, as inspiration.

“You go down to a dismal third place having been in power. Even 12 months ago they were out of the race and coming third. Now [Mr Trudeau] is prime minister.”

Leading pollster John Curtice recently suggested the Liberal Democrats may have to be reclassified as a minor party for the forthcoming Holyrood election by Ofcom, following poor ratings in opinion polls. A TNS opinion poll published just before Christmas showed that the Greens had more than double the support of the Liberal Democrats on the regional list.

However the party's leader in Scotland, Willie Rennie also remains upbeat about the party's chances. In a parliamentary debate he said: "With just five MSPs, Liberal Democrats have punched above our weight—just imagine what we can do with more."