Sir Ed Davey spent much of the year trying to get to No 10 (Downing Street).
Now he has set his sights higher, as he launches a bid to get to No 1 – No 1 in the Christmas singles charts that is.
The Liberal Democrat leader is teaming up with the Bath Philharmonia’s Young Carers’ Choir to release the charity single, Love is Enough.
The song was written by six young carers and former carers, and celebrates the bond they have with the people they care for.
Proceeds from the single will go towards supporting the Carers Trust and the Bath Philharmonia.
Sir Ed, who as a teenager nursed his mother when she had terminal cancer, said he hoped the song would “strike a chord” with carers and their families.
“When I heard the opening lyrics to Love is Enough – ‘every second we have left is worth a thousand others’ – they struck home and meant so much,” he said.
Jason Thornton, music director of Bath Philharmonia, said: “When creating Love is Enough, the young carers shared a profound message: Love is everywhere, even when it’s taken for granted.
“They wanted to remind us all that, no matter who or where you are, there is always someone out there for you.”
As far as we can tell, Sir Ed is the first leader of a major political party to release a Christmas single (although in 2017 Lord Buckethead put out his festive song, A Bucketful of Happiness).
The single is just the latest in a series of headline-grabbing antics the Liberal Democrats have deployed in recent years.
Throughout the general election, Sir Ed took part in increasingly eye-catching stunts, starting with a paddle-boarding excursion in Windemere and culminating in a bungee jump in Eastbourne.
It seemed to pay off with the party winning a record number of seats and becoming Westminster’s third largest party.
At his party’s conference earlier this year, he continued to embrace his ’embarrassing dad’ persona, leading party members in a less-than-tuneful rendition of Abba’s Take A Chance On Me.
Those hoping to hear Sir Ed on lead vocals in the new single may be disappointed.
In Love is Enough, Sir Ed perhaps wisely leaves the bulk of the singing to the members of the Bath Philharmonia’s Young Carers’ Choir.
He joins in at the bridge around three quarters of the way through the song and during the chorus – but there is no big show-stopping solo.
During the general election Sir Ed’s main rivals included Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage.
Now, in his bid for chart-topping glory, he faces competition from the likes of Ed Sheeran, Tom Grennan and the 40th anniversary remake of Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas.
There are also other challengers in the field of charity singles. The Celebs (including ex-boxer Frank Bruno and The Chase’s Anne Hegarty) have released a cover of All You Need is Love to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Reverend and The Makers are putting out Late Night Phonecall to support the Samaritans.
Although Sir Ed may be challenging some big names, there is a fine tradition of choirs making it to number one at Christmas – so he may have chosen a perfect musical coalition by teaming up with the Bath Philharmonia’s Young Carers’ Choir.
St Winifred’s School Choir famously kept John Lennon off the Christmas top slot in 1980 with There’s No-One Quite Like Grandma.
They were followed by the Military Wives in 2011 and the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir in 2015.
But getting a Christmas number one is more complicated than it used to be, when the winner was simply the one which had sold the most singles.
These days the Official Charts Company uses a formula to combine CD and vinyl sales with downloads, streams and YouTube views, giving greater weight to actual sales (physical or downloaded).
As part of the formula, a song needs to be streamed 100 times on a paid-for subscription service to be worth the same as one download sale. For free video and audio streams, 600 plays are required.
But so many classic songs are played relentlessly at parties and on people’s playlists that those streams tot up quickly – which means the top of the festive charts tends to be dominated by the likes of Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas and the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl with Fairytale of New York.
A year ago, Last Christmas by Wham! was the Christmas number one, 39 years after its release – and that song is the bookmakers’ clear favourite to do so again this year.
Wham! racked up 13.3 million streams a year ago to clinch that accolade – so if over the next few weeks we notice Sir Ed and his fellow Lib Dems frantically tapping at their phones, we will know the reason why.
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