Steff Aquarone’s North Norfolk seat has a strong Liberal Democrat pedigree. His predecessor, Norman Lamb, represented the constituency for almost two decades before standing down in 2019, having defied the party’s collapse four years earlier at the 2015 general election.

In many ways then, Aquarone’s own electoral story is a familiar one. He unseated a Conservative incumbent in 2024 as part of the Liberal Democrat resurgence under Ed Davey, reclaiming a former party stronghold with a swing of 16.8 points. But the ground has shifted fast beneath him since then, and Aquarone now finds himself fighting a different kind of battle. “It is us or Reform in my constituency”, he tells me.

“I know it’s a Reform-facing seat, partly because of the local election results and polling, but partly because I knock on 100 doors a week. I get to hear about the sorts of things people are talking about.”

Reform UK did not finish second in any seat the Liberal Democrats won in 2024. But it finished third in 42 of them, including in North Norfolk.

The threat Reform poses in Aquarone’s pitch is personified by his constituency neighbour: the leader of Restore Britain and former Reform MP, Rupert Lowe. The Liberal Democrat leadership has spoken at length about the influence of Elon Musk on British politics, including at the party’s recent conference; Aquarone shares a seat boundary with the tech billionaire’s favourite British parliamentarian. No other Liberal Democrat neighbours an MP elected as a Reform candidate in 2024. 

At the 2026 Norfolk County Council elections, Reform won 40 seats (up 38), finishing just three short of a majority. Great Yarmouth First, the local arm of Restore Britain, leapfrogged both the Conservatives and Labour to become the council’s fourth-largest party. The Liberal Democrats roughly held their ground, winning 13 seats and performing well in North Norfolk.

Significantly though, Reform finished second in 12 of the 13 Liberal Democrat wins in Norfolk – including all seven of the party’s wins in North Norfolk.

Despite North Norfolk’s Liberal Democrat roots therefore – they also run the district council – the constituency does not conform to the modern stereotype of a party stronghold. The “Gail’s strategy” caricature does not apply here; in fact, the closest Gail’s is in Ely, Cambridgeshire, some 65 miles away. For Aquarone, a national strategy targeting the custodians of bourgeois bakeries simply will not do.

Representing a seat in arguably the most politically diverse part of the country comes with unlikely company. “There are issues around our coastline which unite occasionally even me and Rupert Lowe”, Aquarone admits. 

“I agree with him that when there are marine disasters, the local member should be informed and kept up to date as a key stakeholder. Maybe we don’t agree on much beyond that, but we do agree on that.”

Aquarone still leads, in geographical terms, a politically isolated existence. It is some distance between him and his nearest Liberal Democrat colleague in, yes, Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane). He is even further removed from the party’s southern centre of gravity – the orange corridor that arcs from North Devon and Sidmouth up through Oxford, briefly encroaching on London, before reaching the coast again at Eastbourne. 

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This conference season, Ed Davey has argued that Nigel Farage’s route to No 10 is paved with constituencies occupied by Liberal Democrat incumbents. In this rendering of Britain’s electoral landscape, Aquarone finds himself on the frontline. 

There is a tactical rationale to Davey’s soaring anti-Reform rhetoric. This presentation – that Reform UK represents an existential threat to Britain – is designed to court left-leaning tactical voters and moderate Conservatives who fear the prospect of a Farage-led government.

Aquarone endorses this framing, calling it “the choice voters will face in my country”. But the thrust of our conversation concerns whether the Liberal Democrats can balance a tactical message aimed at those alarmed by the march of Reform with a positive case targeting those interested in Farage’s platform, who might yet be persuaded not to vote for it.

Aquarone, a former councillor, brings the same hyper-local instincts as any Liberal Democrat to his exclave in East Anglia. This doorstep work shapes his approach to immigration, an issue he insists the party cannot afford to ignore. 

Aquarone believes that to “dodge” the issue of immigration would be “irresponsible.” He praises the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson, Max Wilkinson, for “starting to speak up about what a liberal solution to stopping the boats looks like. It’s vital for credibility for the first start.” 

The liberal answer, he argues, is re-establishing legal routes for asylum, so that the state can “justify being far, far more forceful on our coastal borders”.

Aquarone explains: “Beneath a lot of the bluster and rhetoric and rumour around immigration is a genuine concern which I share about how incompetent this country has become at maintaining the pretence that it’s controlling its borders.

“No matter who’s coming across the channel, no matter how many migrants we have… there’s this sense that things aren’t working, and the sense of unfairness and injustice that’s fuelling some of the more severe responses to migration is also because it seems like nothing’s working in this country.”

That sense of dysfunction, Aquarone maintains, is felt acutely in coastal communities like those in North Norfolk. “Reform are right about one thing: that this country isn’t working”, he says. “What I fear is their solution of total trash and burn is not going to work any better for anyone, apart from perhaps some people who are interested in deregulating cryptocurrency.”

What the Liberal Democrats offer instead, Aquarone argues, is a “belief in radicalism, in rebuilding things, rewiring things, reworking things.”

He adds: “I think that for Reform-leaning people, I find myself totally agreeing with the circumstances. This country does not have a fair tax burden. It is not fair that certain communities do not get equal access to healthcare, to education, to training, to opportunity…

“We have to take these concerns seriously – but it’s my job as a Liberal MP, hell-bent on changing this country, to show that creative destruction, not just destruction for its own sake, is what’s needed at this point in time.”

When asked what the country at large requires, Aquarone has a formulation in mind. “I think we need a progressive Thatcher in British politics within the next 10 years who’s prepared to have the vision”, he says. 

“That’s the problem that Liberal Democrats have. We’ve got to get over this idea that we’re wet or weak. I want to see strong liberalism – one that’s prepared to make difficult choices and face down vested interests.”

Aquarone saw Thatcher as someone who grabbed the “apparatus of the state” and made it work to serve a vision. “As I say, I think she broke a lot of stuff, and I think she created untold harm and damage because I did not share her political vision. But we need somebody with that degree of conviction.”

This prescription is informed by Aquarone’s analysis of state failure. “This place is run by very clever people”, he says. “They’re not scheming or scurrilous, but the degree of compliance and conformity is incredibly overwhelming and overpowering. This is a place built on conformity and the repression of change and innovation.”

But Aquarone concedes that his party’s current role under the first past the post electoral system must be more measured: growing its parliamentary presence. “Then we get to talk about all this bigger stuff”, he adds. 

Nevertheless, this emphasis on vision arguably colours how Aquarone reviews the more theatrical side of recent Liberal Democrat campaigns. As the candidate contesting a target seat with a sprawling coastline, you will not be surprised to learn that Aquarone found himself in the water alongside his leader in 2024. “I just thought that whole campaign was exactly what the country needed, and we were rewarded by it, especially at the time”, he says. 

But this era, he suspects, has passed. “I think the stunts have kind of gone.” Now, he says, “part of what we are afforded to do, as long as we keep our seats and grow our numbers, is talk about our vision for the country.”

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Until recently, Aquarone served as chair of the Liberal Democrats parliamentary party – an internally elected post with, by his own description, mostly modest formal power. Aquarone chose not to seek re-election, handing the role to his colleague Roz Savage earlier this month.

I ask him about his own election in September 2025, against Anna Sabine, then Ed Davey’s parliamentary private secretary (PPS). Some observers read the contest as a proxy battle between backbenchers and leadership. Aquarone rejects the framing. “I wasn’t a backbench steward, and Anna wasn’t a leadership stooge. So none of those caricatures is true.”

But he adds: “There was definitely some motivation – not to stick it to the leadership at all – but to be able to have someone who wasn’t perhaps associated with them.”

Aquarone’s role, he explains, was mainly administrative; his chief responsibility was to chair a meeting for an hour and a half a week of Liberal Democrat MPs. But his tenure also coincided with an important moment in the party’s recent history. Going from 11 MPs to 72 almost overnight following the 2024 general election, he argues, demanded infrastructure the party simply did not have in place. “I was pleased to play a role at the point in time when, after the sort of chaos of growth, there needs to be some codification, some establishment of process, a little bit of tinkering with the balances, and I was glad to have that opportunity”, he says. 

The role, as he describes it, faces in two directions at once, providing something of a bridge between backbench colleagues and the leadership. Asked whether he found himself a conduit for colleagues’ frustrations, he demurs: “A bit, but not much.”

The party, he says, has “plenty of ways in which colleagues can vent their anger and upset at what things that they think the party should or shouldn’t be doing.”

He adds: “Was I at the coalface of all of the grumbling about the stunts? No, I’m glad to say I wasn’t. But I saw that as an indication that colleagues needed to feel heard in general, not that the stunts should stop or Ed Davey should be dispossessed of his wetsuit or anything.”

His proudest achievement in the post, he says, was commissioning a “skills audit” of Liberal Democrat MPs – mapping the professional backgrounds and expertise of a much-enlarged parliamentary party. Looking back, he suggests that the scramble that followed the 2024 election left some colleagues feeling under-appreciated. “I think not feeling perhaps as though that was sort of known or seen or understood was perhaps where some of the frustration was coming from.”

Asked what the Liberal Democrats must do before the next general election, Aquarone once again calls for a clear sense of conviction. He points to the need for sharper positions on “uncomfortable questions” regarding immigration, tax, welfare, defence and Britain’s place in the world – as well as a clear engagement with the trade-offs involved. His own contribution in our conversation is on offshore tax evasion, which he calls “a sitting prize for anyone prepared to see it through”.

Aquarone concludes: “For me, we’ve got to be bold and radical about the extent of change this country needs. I’d like to see a Lib Dem position on every issue of salience.”