Why Are the Liberal Democrats Struggling in General Election 2017?

(Bloomberg) -- In the small fishing village of Mousehole, assistant harbormaster Bill Johnson dismisses most of what is being said in the run-up to the U.K. election as “a lot of gobbledygook.”

Gibberish aside, the 60-year-old is clear on one thing. A year after voting for Brexit, he's turning from the Liberal Democrats to the Conservatives, the only party he trusts to complete Britain's withdrawal from the European Union.

“Theresa May needs a mandate to push things through on Brexit,” said Johnson in his office overlooking the little harbor with its sailboats, kayaks and paddle boards. “She's the only one going in with a strong line.”

Johnson's switch illustrates a dilemma for the traditional third party in British politics, which suffered a near wipe-out in the last election and is running on an unabashedly pro-EU platform targeting the 48 percent of Remainers. Problem is, it's getting the cold shoulder. Even as May's poll lead is waning, the main beneficiary is Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party.

In the closing stages of the election, assumptions have been turned on their head, from May's initial commanding advantage in public opinion to the theory that the Liberal Democrats could sop up support among almost half of the population that had never wanted Brexit to come to pass.

Unfortunately for the Liberal Democrats, it is stuck in the polls around the 10 percent mark, little more than the 8 percent they won in the 2015 election.

That's why places like Mousehole, described by the poet Dylan Thomas as the “loveliest village in England,” matter to a party fighting for political relevance as it seeks to regain a foothold in its former stronghold of southwest England. The region stretches from Cornwall to the rolling hills of the Cotswolds, taking in cities such as Bath, known for its Roman baths, and Plymouth, from where the Pilgrim Fathers departed for the Americas in 1620.

The Liberal Democrats sensed a shot at a comeback when May called a surprise snap election, arguing she needed a personal mandate and a bigger majority to stand up to the EU in negotiations. They too would make Brexit their strong suit: by opposing it.

Ten minutes after May's election announcement on April 18, Liberal Democrat Leader Tim Farron rushed out a short statement telling voters that “this election is your chance to change the direction of our country” and avoid “a disastrous hard Brexit.”

But “the Brexit message is always going to be a difficult one to fight because it seems to go against the notion of democracy,” said Thom Oliver, a politics lecturer at the University of the West of England and a Liberal Democrat expert.

The offer to revisit the 2016 decision with a second referendum at the end of the Brexit talks may work in cosmopolitan London but further afield could go down as “sour grapes” given that the party lost that argument, he explained. In fact, for some Liberal Democrats campaigning for a seat in the southwest, it's simply not a selling point.

“My answer to the Brexit question is it's going to happen, you can't stop it, there's not going to be a second referendum, whatever Tim Farron says,” said Andrew George, 58, the party's candidate for the St. Ives seat, a district where Johnson and 55 percent of voters chose Brexit. “All this theoretical posturing is kind of irrelevant.”

All but three of the 15 seats the party lost in southwest England in 2015 voted for Brexit.

George represented St. Ives in the House of Commons for 18 years until the party's electoral annihilation two years ago, when it lost all but 8 of the 57 seats it took in 2010. He's focusing his campaign on local issues not Brexit, but is nevertheless downbeat about his prospects: “I think the Tories will edge it here.”

Weighing on George's chances are a number of other factors: U.K. Independence Party voters switching to the Tories, an influx of retirees swelling the ranks of Tory voters, and a change in the district boundaries in 2010 that turned St. Ives from a stronghold into a marginal seat.

After a few missteps, May has retrenched into campaigning in areas that Tories hold rather than her earlier, more ambitious play to destroy Labour bastions in the north. On Wednesday, when a shock survey showed the election could result in a hung Parliament, May showed up in Bath, a seat the Liberal Democrats are trying to wrest back. It's also one of those southwestern bulwarks of the `Remain' vote on Brexit.

“Voters here in the southwest are vitally important for this election,” May said. “In 2015 at the last election, your votes gave my party 15 more seats. If I lose just six of those, then the government risks losing its majority, and we risk Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister.”

Johnson, the harbormaster, isn't the only Brexit supporter turning to May. April Westlake, 78, also voted for the Liberal Democrats in the last election but thinks May is just what the country needs right now.

“We need a lady like her to get us out of the mess we're in,” she said of the prime minister while out walking her French bull terrier in Marazion, a postcard-pretty village opposite St. Michael's Mount, a tidal island topped by a castle and chapel.

The same goes for Peter Freeman, the 68-year-old owner of a charter boat business in St. Ives. A longtime Liberal Democrat voter, he switched to UKIP in 2015 and now doesn't trust his old party. “They want to interfere in the Brexit negotiations to weaken Theresa May's hand,” he said. “She's the only one I can see who will get the best result.”

Still, for every Conservative supporter Bloomberg found, there was a Liberal Democrat to match, suggesting it'll be a tight race and anything can happen.

Shirley Beck, who says she was the only Labour Mayor in the West country in 1993, is toying with the idea of voting for the Liberal Democrats in St. Ives.

Why? Nothing to do with Brexit. It's because George supports re-opening the local hospital.

To contact the author of this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net, Flavia Krause-Jackson