Just over a year on from the general election that wiped out 80% of Liberal Democrat MPs, the party's leader, Tim Farron, is in upbeat mood. For over two decades the Lib Dems were the third-biggest party in Westminster – but one crushing night in May 2015 saw their numbers slashed from 57 MPs in 2010 to just eight. Farron is confident he can lead them back to full strength – in a possible alliance with disillusioned Labour moderates – and he's drawing inspiration from Canada's electoral earthquake.

BuzzFeed News is speaking to Farron ahead of the Lib Dems' annual conference in Brighton, starting this Saturday, which will focus on Brexit and how the party can entice more pro-Europe voters from Labour. And there's one man clearly on his mind – Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.

"Trudeau was the leader of a party that was also small, also not guaranteed frontline coverage," Farron says earnestly over a cup of tea. "And remember as well two years ago the SNP had six MPs. Now that just shows you how things quickly can change. It’s not a prediction but it’s a possibility."

Trudeau's Liberal party stormed to victory in Canada's dramatic 2015 election, ending the nine-year reign of the Conservative party and pushing the New Democratic official opposition into third place.

"In Canada, if it had just been down to the New Democrats there’d still be a Conservative government in Canada now," Farron says. "But people who are progressives thought, You know what, the party that is behind the New Democrats are an almost, counter-intuitively, a better option – they can be a more unifying voice of progressive politics.

"And Trudeau went from a position not much better than ours, leapfrogging a Labour party that was probably not as dysfunctional as ours to win power. We need to convince people that that’s a serious proposition."