Who knows if the country’s least-likely stuntman is hanging up his wetsuit for good – or if Sir Ed Davey’s surfing, paddleboarding and aqua-aerobics actually won his party any votes.
But after their record haul of 71 seats, the Liberal Democrats and their leader now face a more serious challenge.
It’s one thing to welcome into Parliament dozens of fresh-faced new MPs, including some who probably never imagined they’d win. It’s another to deliver tangible results for voters and hold onto their support next time.
Sir Ed’s team celebrated an “exceptional” outcome on Friday which seems to have been down to their localised “ABC strategy” rather than viral clips of rollercoaster rides.
By appealing to tactical voters who were prepared to support “Anyone But Conservatives”, they turfed out four Cabinet ministers: Gillian Keegan, Alex Chalk, Lucy Frazer and Michelle Donelan.
They won the old seats of three former Tory prime ministers: Theresa May’s Maidenhead, David Cameron’s Witney, and Henley which Boris Johnson held during his first stint as an MP.
The retirees Michael Gove and Nadhim Zahawi also saw their erstwhile constituencies turn yellow.
Perhaps this shouldn’t be so surprising, says Professor Tony Travers of the Department of Government at the London School of Economics.
“Historically the Liberal Democrats have done well when the Conservatives are in power but unpopular, in the death throes of a government,” he tells i. “If the Tories regain popularity, that will make life difficult for the Lib Dems.”
To keep hold of these seats, it appears that the Lib Dems intend to primarily continue targeting bedraggled Tory survivors, rather than refocusing their attacks on Labour’s efforts in No 10.
“It is really important that Liberal Democrats make clear that the reason it’s going to be really tough for the Government is that the Conservatives made a terrible mess of everything,” explains a senior party source.
“There is no doubt it will take a lot of hard work over years to repair the damage the Conservatives have done to our country.”
They will sense an opportunity to build on their momentum if a radical right-winger becomes Tory leader, giving the Lib Dems more room in the centre-ground.
Turning tactical voters into long-term supporters is difficult, however. The Lib Dems will have to work hard in convincing people to stick with the party for its own sake, rather than seeing it as a pragmatic alternative.
Sir Ed pledged on Friday morning: “This will not be a one-off.”
Having finally won back people who deserted the party from 2015 onwards, he promised to “work hard to keep that trust with a focus on the issues that matter most to them, most of all the NHS and care”.
Another goal will be turning new voters into new members, to boost the party’s finances and their campaign resources to help in future elections.
Sir Ed said on Friday that he hopes the party’s plucky approach “has encouraged people to join the Liberal Democrats”.
During the campaign, Sir Ed made the decision to record a highly personal election broadcast, opening up about the challenges of raising a disabled son and caring for his dying mother during his childhood.
“Talking about his caring responsibility also seemed to get real cut-through,” says Lucia Hodgson, a former Downing Street special adviser who is now a partner at Charlesbye Strategy. “He moved people and made them laugh, which doesn’t happen often. It’s quite commendable.”
He was the only party leader to enjoy a boost in his personal approval ratings during the campaign, up from 15 to 30 per cent, according to election-eve YouGov findings.
As a result, he will be taken more seriously by the media and by voters, according to James Mitchell, Edinburgh University’s public policy professor.
“After the stunts, Ed Davey now has an opening,” he tells i. “The Tories are in such a mess, so he will be listened to on policy. He has a platform to project himself as a really serious opposition leader.”
Even now, however, only about a third of voters can recognise the party leader in a picture, according to another poll.
And given that Lib Dem media coverage focused almost entirely on Sir Ed over the last six weeks, it’s likely that fewer people will know of colleagues like deputy leader Daisy Cooper and foreign affairs spokesperson Layla Moran.
He will want to emphasise that the Lib Dems are a big and serious party, not a quirky one-man band.
With more than three quarters of his MPs new to Parliament, Sir Ed may feel under pressure to keep building his own profile – without relying on gimmicks – while simultaneously trying to boost new comrades.
This much larger cohort of fresh MPs will be a “completely different beast to manage”, according to Polly Mackenzie, who was former leader Nick Clegg’s director of policy in Downing Street.
“We don’t know how the Lib Dems will choose to evolve,” she told Times Radio. “Where will they go in terms of Europe, the economy, public services?”
Travers agrees that the new recruits could be unpredictable. When they were selecting candidates, “the Lib Dems probably had a high-watermark hope of 30 to 40 seats”, he says. “They wouldn’t have dreamt of 71, whatever some of the polls were saying.
“When people who are not expecting to win suddenly become MPs, there is always a chance that less due diligence has been done by their political parties, like Reform discovered on scale during their campaign.”
The party source admits: “Clearly it’s going to be a huge challenge to bring together the biggest team we’ve ever had.”
But they add: “Ed is one of the most experienced parliamentarians in the House. He won his seat from the Conservatives in 1997 and cut his teeth in exactly the sort of environment we face now.”
Having leapfrogged the SNP to become the third-largest party in Parliament, Sir Ed will be entitled to challenge Sir Keir Starmer twice every week at Prime Ministers’ Questions.
The party may also want to use private members’ bills more effectively. Between the 2019 election and the dissolution of Parliament in May, 48 of these secured royal assent – but just two were the work of Lib Dems.
It’s tough to get them through Parliament, but they are a way of making a genuine on people’s lives, as those two Lib Dem laws showed.
Wendy Chamberlain’s legislation gave employees one week’s unpaid leave a year to help a dependent with a long-term care need, while Wera Hobhouse’s act obliges employers to prevent workers being sexually harassed.
The party’s manifesto exhibited plenty of ambitious policies. It included promises to expand Carers’ Allowance and scrap the two-child limit on benefits, as well as bringing the free personal care model introduced in Scotland to England.
The Lib Dems also pounced on the outrage over water companies dumping sewage, vowing to bring in unlimited fines for polluters and introducing a new, tougher regulator to tackle the problem.
But the respected Institute of Fiscal Studies think tank was damning about the £27bn earmarked for extra spending, saying this “long list” of ambitions would “likely make it harder to address the big challenges with funding our core public services”.
Professor Mitchell reckons there was “an element of make believe” about the manifesto.
When the Lib Dems entered government with the Conservatives in 2010, “they had to compromise on promises and it cost them,” he says. “They don’t have to worry about that this time – I doubt voters will remember what they actually pledged.”
Ms Hodgson says the party successfully “picked things that touched a nerve, like social care and water pollution – issues that the major parties don’t seem to have an answer to”. But she agrees that ultimately the manifesto was a “wish-list” rather than a programme that could realistically be implemented in full.
Their policies and fiscal plans will surely be under greater scrutiny at the next election. The challenge will come in trying to keep the same enthusiasm about ambitious ideas that make the Lib Dems stand out, while also working on their credibility as a potential party of government – or first things first, an official opposition.