It really takes some doing.

Polls indicate the nation is swinging four-square behind your signature policy. You’re up against a conspicuous shambles, both in government and opposition. You represent a centre-ground home for potentially hundreds of thousands of traditional Labour votes who feel, under Jeremy Corbyn, politically homeless.

And still you can’t manage to get more than one in ten of the electorate interested in what you’re selling.

What’s up with the Liberal Democrats these days?

I asked that same innocent question on Twitter a few days ago and within 48 hours almost 800 people had weighed in with their answers. So at least people still care. That’s the only positive spin, though.

The Liberal Democrats are sinking before our eyes. A small boat in a torrent with an oarsman trying to row his way to shore with a garden hoe.

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That’s my tortured analogy. Twitter was more brutal.

Alongside much self-pity about the iniquity of the first past the post system, the absolute contempt for the three most recent leaders shines through.

But let’s quickly knock the PR argument on the head so we can all focus on what’s really wrong.

While it’s true that proportional representation (PR) would have given the Lib Dems around 48 seats at the last election, as opposed to the 12 they managed, it is also true that if my aunt possessed testicles she would be my uncle.

And while it may be cathartic to cry about how much more publicity you could generate with that many MPs, you’ve only got to look at Nigel Farage to understand that the number of seats in Westminster isn’t the problem.

PR ain’t never going to happen. Better get used to it. And let’s be real: PR didn’t stand in the way of the Lib Dems getting 57 seats. The next election they won eight.

Which brings us to the three other significant factors dominating the “reasons why the Liberal Democrats currently suck” dossier. In order, Nick Clegg, Tim Farron and Vince Cable.

The slump under Clegg’s leadership was breathtaking and instructive – from almost seven million votes in the 2010 election to fewer than 2.5 million in 2015. That is some fall from grace.

Clegg is a living, breathing example of the unforgiving nature of the British electorate towards anyone they think is a Judas.

Clegg is a living, breathing example of the unforgiving nature of the British electorate towards anyone they think is a Judas.

Articulate, urbane, internationalist, European – on one superficial level he looked just the man to take the party head-to-head with a Labour Party floundering in the centre ground it had dominated since Blair.

If only he hadn’t alienated an entire generation of voters, and many of their parents, by making them pay £27,000 for their degree in media studies (is there any other kind?).

It’s a lesson, one might think, for any Labour leader who thought he could kid along two-thirds of his party’s membership by pretending he was going to campaign for a second referendum, but instead saw fit to allow Brexit to scrape over the line because of his long-standing hatred of the European Union and everything it stands for. And, no, I haven’t got anyone in mind, I’m just saying.

As for Farron, his biggest crime wasn’t the daft and somehow unprincipled way he flip-flopped over his religious principles and attitude to gay sex. His biggest crime was being congenitally inconsequential.

Ditto Vince Cable. Cable comes across as a man fully aware of his own existential pointlessness yet going through the motions of life regardless, not quite sure what the alternative might be.

There’s as much fire and spark left in him as a 6th of November bonfire.

Centrism is the home of radicalism – it’s the place where stuff actually gets done.

Cautious and cagey, unwilling to excite, unable to inspire. The absolute embodiment of the party he leads. Time for a total rebirth.

As simple as it sounds, leadership is the only thing getting in the way of the Liberal Democrats and a renewed political purpose. A single individual with the charisma and chutzpah to reignite not just the party, but the very brand of liberal politics.

Time for a Nigel Farage of the centre.

The centre ground is often portrayed as the refuge of moderates. Extremists on either side (but especially the far left these days) sneer at the very idea of centrism.

Yet centrism is the home of radicalism – it’s the place where stuff actually gets done.

The hard left and the hard right of British politics are two sides of the same coin – fantastically dreamy dogmatists, always harking back to a place in history that never actually existed.

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Articulating the radical nature of the centre is a tough gig, though. It will take massive real cash investment to pay for some marketing genius plus a willingness to alienate your existing core supporters in pursuit of a new, broader community that may or may not exist.

In other words, it’s a make-or-break gamble.

Layla Moran, the current education spokesperson, was one of the names who filled my Twitter timeline as being someone who could step into the Vince void. Jo Swinson also. Maybe. But in truth, neither have yet proven themselves as having the boldness required.

Cable has hinted that when he goes (and he can’t go soon enough) the next leader may come from outside politics. That may turn out to be a necessity – a brilliantly useful point of difference from the Westminster swamp.

The Liberal Democrats’ true opportunity is not some tactical land grab of Remain voters, but a much bigger strategic play: recreating themselves as the force in British politics that can look forward, not back.