In a memorable speech during the 1979 no-confidence debate in James Callaghan's minority government, Michael Foot, the Leader of the House (whose brother Dingle had been a Scottish Liberal MP), spoke of the Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher leading ‘her troops into battle snugly concealed behind a Scottish nationalist shield, with the boy David holding her hand’. The leader of the Liberal Party, he added with the ‘utmost affection’, had ‘passed from rising hope to elder statesman without any intervening period whatsoever’.

Following that election, the Scottish Nationalist shield was weakened to just two MPs, while the Boy David held steady with three in Scotland, including his own. This, given the chaotic circumstances of that election, was a good outcome. With Mrs Thatcher resolutely opposed to legislative devolution – the little loved Scotland Act 1978 was swiftly expunged from the statute book – the Scottish Liberal Party was robbed of its Home Rule rallying cry, although the decline of the SNP at least allowed it to recover third-party votes from the Nationalists.

Further disappointment came in June 1979 when Scottish party leader Russell Johnston contested the first direct elections to the European Parliament, having served as an appointed member since earlier that decade. Johnston had become a passionate Europhile, but some of his colleagues believed he was taking on too much and might end up neglecting his Westminster seat. Although ‘Russell's in Brussels’ had a certain ring to it, he lost in the Highlands and Islands to Winnie Ewing, who went on to be lauded as ‘Madame Ecosse’. Johnston lost even more heavily in 1984. Given that Ewing's party remained equivocal on Scottish membership of the EEC, it must have been galling for the French-speaking, Paris-loving Johnston. He concentrated instead on the (relatively powerless) Council of Europe in Strasbourg.

Better news for the Scottish Liberals came following a long-anticipated split in the Labour Party, the consequence of hard-left infiltration and disagreements on the European question. The Social Democratic Party (SDP) was launched on 26 March 1981 under the collective leadership of Roy Jenkins (to whom Steel was already close), Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers. It formed a regional ‘Council for Scotland’, while an ‘Alliance’ with the Liberal Party soon followed.