The LibDem’s general election internal post mortem is out and it is the usual tragi-comedy. Not quite as funny as the time after the 2015 general election, when they wrote to Lynton Crosby asking him to tell them how he crushed them…

It opens by saying 2019 was

A disastrous General Election year, many years in the making. To say that the outcome of the general election on 11 December 2019 was a bitter disappointment for the Liberal Democrats is a big understatement. We emerged with one seat fewer than we had achieved in 2017, the party leader Jo Swinson lost her seat…

The election was actually on 12 December. They can’t even get that detail correct in their review into what they got wrong.

The review concludes that their campaign was a disaster waiting to happen:

While decisions made in 2019 certainly frustrated our electoral prospects, the underlying lack of preparation is a bigger cause for concern. There was an opportunity for us to win more seats in 2019 but the main causes of that failure are the decisions made over the course of many years, before Brexit was even conceived.

Though Brexit was a key factor, the report reckons hardcore remainers and leavers were 25% of the population each. The party’s campaign therefore ignored the 50% of the population who just wanted the Brexit issue to go away and the pain to stop. Will they learn?

Come on down Layla…