Who:

Tim Farron. A radical combination of being very centrist and not being Nick Clegg.

What:

Winning back some seats after suffering a slightly unfair but also entirely foreseeable implosion at the last election.

Why:

May taking the Conservatives a little further to the right and Corbyn’s refreshingly original interpretation of reality have left a centrist vaccum. The Lib Dems – solely through luck rather than judgement – find themselves perfectly positioned to exploit this niche. If they play it right, they could make some very significant gains.

How:

There are three main prongs to the Lib Dem approach.

Firstly, they’re hoping to win back their previous vote. This will likely mean keeping both Nick Clegg and Vince Cable in a box somewhere remote, so they don’t accidentally get any air time and bugger it all up again. Failure to pick up at least a half dozen of these seats should be seen as a disastrous result for the party.

Secondly, they want to pick up traditional Labour voters who don’t want to further feed the PLP leadership’s folie au deux. This includes Remain voters, people who voted for Blair in ’97 only to be bitterly disappointed, and everyone south of Dudley. The problem here is that they may suffer the UKIP Effect: picking up millions more votes, but spread so thinly that it doesn’t translate into parliamentary gains. Because our political system is muchos dumb, por favor.

Finally, they want to pick up Remain-voting Tories, now that party has abandoned the political centre for the far-Burn-It-All-Down-And-Eat-The-Poor-right. There are a lot of people with a Brexit bone to pick and nobody to pick it for them. The Tories certainly won’t and Labour dropped the ball so hard on it that most people – myself included – can only conclude they did so intentionally. This makes the Lib Dems a strong choice for hot-topic voters.

Outside of this, they’ll be picking at moderate voters who are concerned about education and healthcare.

Predictions:

Probably quite a strong performance and potentially the only obstacle between the Prime Minister and a 100+ seat working majority. However, not as strong as it could be, as they’ll suffer in the face of obstinately party-loyal Labour voters and the likelihood of disaffected centrist Tories opting to abstain rather than switch.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised by them winning 30+ seats. If I’m wrong about the Labour voters and/or Remain voters from both the main parties do actually switch allegiance, a phenomenal showing would put them at 60-70. I don’ think this likely, but it’ll be what the party moonshot goal is.