In late October 2013 it was announced that Coetzee might return to South Africa and was being offered a Western Cape provincial cabinet post by the DA. However, in August 2014 he instead switched to a job at Liberal Democrat party HQ, becoming the General Election Director of Strategy, for which he was reportedly paid a salary of £110,000. The Liberal Democrats faired very badly in the UK 2015 General Election, losing most of their seats. Coetzee is viewed as having led the party into oblivion. Writing for "The Guardian" after the result, Coetzee said, "We got routed by what I call the Fear. We presumed from the beginning that the Conservatives would try to scare voters with the prospect of a Miliband government that would risk the economy. But in the event the polls and the SNP conspired to ratchet up the Fear to Terror levels, because they showed Labour’s only path to power would be via the SNP." During the summer of 2015, Coetzee joined Britain in Europe, the pro-European referendum campaign organisation. The campaign is seen as lacking in charismatic leadership. As Director of Strategy for the 'Stronger In' campaign, Coetzee was relatively quiet, writing publicly once in a South African newspaper to comment on the 2016 UK budget and difficulties within the UK Conservative Party. In the June 2016 referendum the UK voted to leave the EU, and Ryan Coetzee blamed the defeat in a tweet on "25 years of right wing tabloid propaganda". Coetzee has a son, Daniel Jackson Coetzee, born on 20 October 2006.