Taking to the streets with Tim Farron

Who says coalition killed the Lib Dems' spirit? As party activists streamed down Whitehall towards Downing Street on Saturday for a protest against Tory plans to scrap the Human Rights Act, liberal blood was up and the electorally scarred party felt alive and kicking. “Can anyone think of a shouty thing we can do?” one organiser asked the assembled group. In the end, they came up with a call and response arrangement: “human rights!” “it's our fight!” Not wildly exciting, but it was at least catchy. Would-be party leader Tim Farron summed up the mood while speaking to me at the rally: “the way back for us is through grassroots community campaigning."

The Liberal Democrats are engaged in a bout of soul-searching. Having lost the vast majority of his MPs in last month's general election, Nick Clegg stepped down as leader. With him died the Lib Dems we'd come to know—the even-handed second party of government, would-be providers of a “brain” to Labour and a “heart” to the Tories. The electorate and the parliamentary arithmetic conspired to ensure that they would not be power brokers this time round. Despite this, the party has received an unexpected boon: 15,000 new members have swelled its ranks since polling day. How is its next leader to harness this momentum? And how should it position itself now?

On Saturday, I glimpsed one possible alternative identity. Farron, along with his chief rival Norman Lamb, blared out a short speech at the rally. Unlike Lamb, who said his goodbyes shortly afterward, Farron was in his element. The former party President, a renowned local campaigner beloved of party activists, gamely nodded, cheered and occasionally steadied the platform for speakers from the Labour party, trade unions, marxist groups and charities. He even brought his daughter along for the fun. Was this street fighting party a preview of its future under Farron, who is the favourite to replace Clegg?

“It’s about picking... high level issues like human rights, and then making them absolutely relevant street by street,” Farron told me during a lapse in proceedings. "As Tip O’Neill once said, 'all politics is local.'” He was keen to stress that this didn't mean sacrificing votes—“there is nothing grubby about winning elections”—but his vision seems to involve recruiting and then galvanising new activists through action on key issues, before mobilising them to win first council seats and regional assemblies until finally they can take back some of their share of the national vote. Regaining MPs in local strongholds is important, he said, but so is rebuilding solid support across the country: “I want us getting 10, 15, 20 per cent [of the vote] everywhere.”

Part of this, he told me, would be forging links with other kinds of groups outside of parliamentary politics: “it means doing things alongside and understanding the likes of 38 Degrees, Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth... dare I say even the Countryside Alliance. People who go into places that political parties don’t.”

Before the election, Farron was often described as the “wasteland candidate” for the leadership—the person to lead the party back to civilisation should it face total electoral destruction. His vision of a party rebuilding itself on a diet of protest-fuelled fervour could be a neat way of allaying members' frustrations about their (temporary?) lack of parliamentary representation. “If Churchill was still with us today, he would defect back to the Liberals,” Farron bellowed in his speech. His blend of tubthumping liberalism and relentless optimism could prove attractive to a party cowed by defeat and wearied by the compromise of coalition.