The news that two Lib Dem  front benchers, Alison Bennett quietly and Charlie Maynard with a bit more noise have resigned their positions  this week should concern the party.

It’s been clear for some time that all is not well within the party, and the controlling, top-down management style adopted by the party leadership since the General Election in 2024. This sort of rigid discipline didn’t work so well in the Labour Party in the first two years of the Starmer administration and it sure as hell is doomed in a liberal party. We are supposed to encourage independence of mind and spirit.

Nick Baird’s critique of the “equine pacification” strategy on Friday encapsulated well what many party members think and it is clear that this view is reflected in a fairly significant chunk of the parliamentary party. The sense I get is that a fair number of MPs don’t necessarily want to change leader, but they do want us to show ourselves as a radical liberal party that speaks to the whole nation, not just the blue wall and they do want to be treated like adults whose contribution to party strategy should be listened to.

The party’s po-faced reaction to Andy Burnham’s speech and devotion to the triple lock at all costs has led to the current murmurs of dissatisfaction.

Christine Jardine did a brilliant interview on Newsnight the other night. She said that she had not seen an alternative strategy from Charlie Maynard. She says it doesn’t help anyone to have a fight about who the leader is and we need to focus on moving forward as a party.  It was another accomplished media performance which makes the recent events in Edinburgh West incomprehensible.

Provoking a leadership election in the Lib Dems rightly can’t be done easily. If a majority of MPs do not pass a motion of no-confidence in the leader, and there is no indication at this stage that they would, then there is another option:

the receipt by the President of a requisition submitted by at least 75 Local Parties (including for this purpose, the Affiliated Organisation or Organisations representing youth and/or students) following the decision of a quorate general meeting;

Local parties are certainly having AGMs at the moment and might choose to take this path, but I would think it unlikely that 75 local parties would take this course at this stage. If they didn’t do it in the wildest days of the coalition, the chances of them doing it now are about as high as me winning the London Marathon next year.

This should not, however, make Ed Davey feel safe and comfortable. That is where he is going wrong. He’s not toast, but the bread is moving closer to the toaster. Whether he takes action to avoid the appliance being switched on is entirely up to him.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social