Jo Swinson had spent days preparing for her appearance on BBC1’s primetime Question Time special on Friday night. Liberal Democrat HQ had pinned major hopes on the show after she was left out of a debate with her rivals Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn earlier in the week. But her half-hour in front of a live studio audience proved to be a far more bruising experience than they could ever have anticipated.

Viewers winced as Swinson faced a series of stinging attacks over Lib Dem policy, her own voting record and the party’s campaigning tactics, with barely any applause for anything she said. Of all the party leaders who took part — Corbyn, Johnson, and Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon — it was Swinson who faced the most anger.

When the show was over, Swinson’s shellshocked team attempted to spin her performance: She showed "steel", they said, in the face of relentlessly tough questioning. Meanwhile, she was on the way back to London with her close aides, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

The next day, one Lib Dem politician claimed that, due to the audience being based on current party representation, there were "effectively" two Lib Dem voters in the room. A BBC source told BuzzFeed News there were roughly the same number of Labour and Conservative voters in the audience, and a smaller number of Lib Dem and SNP voters — although they would not say how many. There was also a slim majority of Leave voters over Remainers, apart from those who were too young to vote in the last election.



Swinson's allies insist that the politically engaged audience was not representative of voters at large — and emphasise that the real test is how she came across to viewers at home.

But Lib Dem activists have told us there is no doubt that the questions raised on the show accurately reflect the concerns being aired on doorsteps across the country.

Halfway through the general election campaign, Swinson finds herself at the head of a party that is sliding in the polls — despite competing against two main parties that have arguably moved to their extreme edges, leaving the centre ground wide open. Campaigners say now is the time for party bosses to take a long hard look at what is going wrong, before it is too late.