Mark, first of all, are you now a home of One Nation Tories who... are

disappointed we've left the EU, basically.

Definitely there are people like that who have been joining the party and are very welcome to continue joining the party, but we are more than that.

If you look at our approach to environmental issues, if you look at our approach to rebuilding our links with Europe, but also if you look at our approach to things like fixing the basic way politics and democracy works in the UK, you know we have our own distinctive position and it's understandable given the direction that kemi badlock has taken in the tory party in that there are people in the tory party who are thinking actually maybe the lib dems are you know the one for one for me in the future but you know we've also seen in recent times councillors join us you know locally around the country from both labour and the greens as well so we're not we're not just simply pigeon holders you know in in the way that you may be implied

When you look at the polling, what do you think of Ed Davey's weaknesses?

Well, I think we're in quite a good position in the polls when you look below the headline figure.

If you look at the latest figures, both from Ipsos and YouGov, two different very pivotal pollsters, on people's favourability ratings for political parties.

Lib Dems come out best, both in terms of the proportion of people who say they view us favourably and the net score.

Over to Mark.

Thank you.

Lovely to join you all, uh, this morning.

Um, and actually listening to, particularly to what Doug and Sue have just been saying about the slightly patch and mend approach over years that different governments have taken in this area reminds me very much of my experience filling in, uh, the official paperwork for joining the House of Lords.

So I joined the House of Lords just over a year ago.

And the official vetting process that you go through with HOLACQ, the form that you fill in really does feel like it is a form that has had different sections added to it in response to previous scandals.

So huge amounts of financial detail, absolutely justifiable, particularly going all the way back to the, you know, the days of David Lloyd George.

... and then I'll go to Sue and finally Doug.

[laughs]

... uh, you know, he is a massively dominant figure looming over the whole world.

But also politically, I think that, you know, we're very much in a world where the amount of campaigning people put in in different places really makes a difference to the results, and looking at things like national share of the vote or uniform swing doesn't get you that far in terms of understanding what's going on.

And hence, I think last year we took, it's probably fair to say, a fair few journalists by surprise by the fact that we beat both Labor and the Tories.

We did better than either of them in the local elections last time because you ha- weren't s- seeing that in the national polls and the swings, and so I'm pretty confident we'll have another very good set of results this time, and we might not do it this year, but we're certainly on track to overtake the Conservatives in the number of councilors.

We already run more councils than them, and I think, you know, overtaking them in number of councilors would be quite a seismic change in the basic infrastructure, if I can put it like that, of British politics.

What are the great kind of crusades for this party over the next 12, 18 months or so?

Well, I think liberalism is really well suited for those sorts of challenges.