Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home with me Alan Tolless.

This week, focusing on the Liberal Democrats after they held their annual party conference in

Bournemouth, which, despite still giving off a celebratory mood at becoming the third largest

party in the Commons last year, was beset by questions over whether

Ed Davies' stunt-based leadership style is wearing a little thin, and if they are punching below

their weight in the political discourse 12 months on in their biggest electoral success, as Reform and

Nigel Farage continue to pull Westminster and the media's focus. So we're going to start with some

dispatches from the South Coast, recorded by my poll home colleague Zoe Crowther at the event,

who spoke to several other parties MPs about the big themes of conference and where the Lib Dems are positioning themselves in our fractured political system.

So you're going to hear of some of our interviews now with three of the parties MPs, firstly Jess Brown Fuller, then former leader Tim Farron, and finally James McClary,

before we discuss

our wider reflections on the conference later in the episode.

It feels like, you know, it's a Danny Kruger defection last week, that the kind of moderate

Tory, one-nation Tory land seems completely deserted at the moment.

Yeah.

So do you agree with people who feel that you should just go after those votes

or do you see it as more broad than that and that you need to spread across everywhere now

to basically stop reform going into government?

Yeah, and I think it's far more broad than that.

I think, I mean, if you look in my local council, one of my only two green councillors

has just quit because they don't agree with the direction of travel that the Green Party is going.

And they would probably describe themselves as more of a centrist left member.

...