If you want a picture of the future, imagine a man falling off a paddleboard – for ever

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So what went on in that meeting of Liberal Democrat MPs on Tuesday evening?

The fury with critics of Ed Davey we were told about beforehand seems to have evaporated overnight, as everyone has told us how positive it was.

Zoe Crowther and Harriet Symonds say on PoliticsHome:

Supportive MPs described Davey as having been “in listening mode” at the meeting, with most MPs keen to join in a discussion on how the party can grow ahead of the next general election and build on its record number of MPs. 

PoliticsHome understands that only three MPs spoke out with criticisms of Davey’s leadership approach in the meeting, and the party has not sent out any communication to party members about the internal rows.

Maybe not everyone has got the message about listening. Here's Lisa Smart on Times Radio, as quoted by Josh Self on Politics.co.uk:

Smart said the party had gone "from having 11 MPs elected in 2019 to 72 at the last general election". She said she had heard a colleague describe that as going "from a startup to a scale-up".

She said: "There are organisational things that come through that. Just think about the meeting that you have when you’re a team of 11 versus the meeting you’ve had when you’re a team of 72. If everybody contributes for two minutes, that goes on for hours and hours and hours." 

Asked about the stunts that characterised Davey’s 2024 general election campaign, Smart said she thought he would “continue to do things that are visually interesting that get across our message”.

I've said many times that the media - local television in particular - want good video and images, and that Remain's inability to offer much beyond George Osborne in suit threatening to put your taxes up was a major weakness of its referendum campaign.

But there is a danger that if we just offer them Ed Davey falling off a paddleboard again they will tire of it, quite possibly on Day 1 of the campaign. We need to offer them something fresh,

Added to that, Ed seems to have ambitions to promote himself as the most experienced political leader, so his advisers need to think how they blend his stunts with looking prime ministerial.

My own view is that the lack of an obvious alternative means Ed will lead the party into the next general election.