Tim Farron is right to make the party the voice of the 48%, but fighting for Europe is a hard way to prove that the party is not part of the establishment

The Liberal Democrats are in a “very good place”, the party’s leader Tim Farron told Andrew Marr on BBC television yesterday morning. In support of this novel claim, Mr Farron cited recent local byelection results where the party, unlike either Labour or the Conservatives, has made 13 net gains, winning seats in unexpected places like Mosborough, Sheffield, and Tupton, north-east Derbyshire, as well as ousting a Ukip councillor in Cornwall at the start of the month. Membership has surged since the Brexit vote, and stands at a 10-year high while in Scotland, the Holyrood elections suggested that support has at least stopped ebbing away. These are indeed reasons for the party leader to be cheerful. But that is not the same as being in a good place.

It is easy enough to understand why, post-coalition and post-Brexit, Lib Dems are floundering. The harder question is what to do about it. Any analysis of Brexit starts from the premise that it was a rejection of an establishment at the heart of which the Lib Dems had placed themselves by joining the coalition – jettisoning their identity as an insurgency at the precise moment that insurgency went mainstream. Six years on from the decision, many voters still feel the party is just another grid reference on the map of the political elite.

Yet there is a large space in the politics of Britain, and in particular of England and Wales, that the Lib Dems could occupy. Theresa May’s promise of a more inclusive government has so far spoken much more to rightwing populism than to the concerns of the progressive centre. Labour, likely to re-elect Jeremy Corbyn next weekend, appears set on a future firmly on the left. That leaves acres of unclaimed territory for what has always been a centrist party. In Brighton for their conference this weekend, activists were taking heart from an Opinium survey for the Social Market Foundation which showed that 45% of voters regard themselves as being in the centre. Other similar surveys find that Lib Dem policies are broadly in line with more voters’ attitudes than those of any other single party.

Nonetheless, at the moment the Lib Dems stand at a mere 8% in the polls. They have just eight MPs. Rather than having access by right, they must fight for a turn with the machinery of accountability, questions to the prime minister, committee chairs, even official funding for political work. Once the party had a succession of leaders who were national figures and could amplify the party’s message despite its few MPs. Now, facing the aftermath of power for the first time in nearly a hundred years, there is no David Steel, Paddy Ashdown, Charles Kennedy or Nick Clegg, and small claim on a place in the national debate to compensate for the unfairness of the Westminster voting system. All the same, a weightier figurehead than Mr Farron – despite his popularity with the party’s activists – might have a greater impact on voters’ jaundiced political views.

The party does have one great potential asset. Rightly Mr Farron intends it to be the voice of remain; he is pitching for the leadership of the 48%. On Monday he will launch a campaign for a second referendum on whatever Brexit deal emerges over the next couple of years. Like any student of post-referendum politics, he knows that common efforts around a single objective can be an effective solvent of traditional loyalties.

It cannot happen all at once. The party has to be careful to avoid giving angry voters the impression that Lib Dems are happy to disresepect the will of the people. But they can reasonably argue that they campaigned energetically, on cross-party platforms, for remain because they believe that Britain belongs in Europe and that to leave would be to court catastrophe.

Mr Farron is making a smart appeal to pro-Europe Labour supporters with a direct challenge to Jeremy Corbyn on his commitment to the single market. In a Guardian interview last week, he admired the social and welfare reforms that Tony Blair introduced and spoke respectfully of the former Labour leader’s record as an election winner. His party, according to a survey by Liberal Democrat Voice, is cautiously in favour of cross-party cooperation, and Caroline Lucas, the local MP and new co-leader of the Greens, spoke at a fringe event on Sunday. All these are good omens; but there are also lessons to be learned from recent failure. If the small-l liberal centre is to rebuild successfully it must not only talk about how to win power back, but show that it understands why it lost it.