Fun's over Ed... time to say where Lib Dems are going

Final day at party conference. Time for the big speech. Was this the moment where Ed Davey finally abandoned cheesy stunts and revealed where he is leading the Lib Dems to?

- JOE MURPHY

Maybe not.

With an hour to go, Davey tweeted pictures of himself playing tennis badly wearing baggy gear that definitely wasn’t worthy of Waheed Alli’s cheque book. Turns out that while we were all listening to a dull morning session, he was performing for the cameras in the Brighton sunshine.

Still, maybe his speech would answer a few of the questions that this celebratory conference seemed to be desperately avoiding, like where the heck are the Lib Dems going over the next four years?

Davey bounced on stage to the strains of Abba’s “Take a Chance on Me”. Alarming echoes of Theresa May’s shimmying to “Dancing Queen”, which didn’t end well. Except that Davey actually sang along in a high-pitched, tuneless croak.

“If you need me, let me know, gonna be around,” he squeaked while waving to the crowd. Did he forget that his lapel mics would broadcast his hopeless rendition to the world? Or did he do it deliberately to make another social media meme? It’s honestly hard to tell for sure, but Slapstick Ed is a mighty convenient distraction.