Last week at Liberal Democrat Conference, I was delighted to pass an amendment to our party strategy making clear that, if we are serious about growing our party, we must become more relevant to people living in urban areas, diverse communities and younger generations.
Our recent electoral successes give us an extraordinary platform. But we cannot be satisfied with consolidating our support only where we are already strong. We should be ambitious about winning and governing in cities and diverse communities across Britain too.
For Southwark Liberal Democrats, this is not just a discussion about party strategy. We are already putting it into practice.
Following May’s elections, Liberal Democrats entered a Joint Administration with the Southwark Green Party, ending 16 years of majority Labour rule.
This week we marked 123 days in office. We are demonstrating what Liberal Democrats can achieve in one of the most diverse and densely populated urban boroughs in Britain.
We have announced the return of Community Councils, putting neighbourhood democracy and devolved decision-making back at the heart of the council. We have reintroduced One Stop Shops, announced community skips, invested more in community safety and created a free school uniform bank for families who need it most.
We have launched an empty homes task force to get council homes back into use, secured a better deal from developers of student accommodation to fund local community projects and defended our affordable housing requirements.
We have saved a mental health service and Dementia Adviser Service, announced £1.5 million of emergency support for Southwark’s voluntary and community sector and invested tens of millions into new council homes.
We are also demonstrating what a proudly liberal approach to equality can look like in local government.
We are developing an LGBTQ+ action plan, have stood alongside Southwark’s trans community in challenging the Government’s EHRC Code of Practice, and are installing a permanent memorial to James Pratt and John Smith, the last two men executed in England for consensual same-sex intimacy.
At Council Assembly last week, we passed our Liberal Democrat motion calling for closer ties with the European Union, with the eventual aim of the UK rejoining as a full member.
There is a wider lesson here for our party.
We should be immensely proud of our success in suburban, rural and smaller-town communities. But we should be equally ambitious for urban Britain.
That means talking confidently about the issues shaping life in our cities: the cost of living, housing crises, homelessness, renters’ rights, public transport, community safety, inequality and climate change.
It also means ensuring younger people and Britain’s diverse communities hear from us, see themselves represented in our party and know that liberalism has something meaningful to offer them.
We now need to put the party strategy we agreed into action. We need to organise, experiment, communicate differently and demonstrate what Liberal Democrats can deliver when entrusted with power.
We should be ambitious about where this takes us. In May, across Bermondsey and Old Southwark constituency, Liberal Democrats won the popular vote and elected 12 councillors, more than all the other parties combined. It shows the potential for our party in diverse, urban communities. We are now determined to build on that success and fight to win Bermondsey and Old Southwark back at the next General Election.
We are only 123 days into Southwark’s Joint Administration. There is an enormous amount still to do and difficult decisions ahead.
But Southwark Liberal Democrats are already showing that our party can win, govern and deliver in a diverse inner-city borough.
Conference has given us a strategy for broadening our party’s appeal. In Southwark, we intend to help prove that it can be done.
* Victor Chamberlain is the Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader of Southwark Council, Vice Chair of Federal Council and Liberal Democrat Vice Chair of the Neighbourhoods Committee at the Local Government Association
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7 Comments
Good work and urban areas should be more of a focus for our party. There is at least one thing missing from the party strategy and that is the need to link local and national policies starting now. We get little national media attention so it is up to local parties to include reference to national issues in all their campaigning. How else can people know what we stand for in the national scene? I made this point at an IPPR conference fringe and the panel agreed; the rep from Common Ground said this point hits the nail on the head for how we must campaign in readiness for the next GE.
All whilst playing second fiddle to the Green party of course. And credit for toppling Labour goes almost entirely to them.
Something that was completely avoidable, just as it was when we last took over Southwark. But we’d needed party leadership and HQ to make the party appeal to the types of voters that live in places like Southwark which we were perfectly willing to do under Kennedy and Clegg, (despite the latter being a right winger at heart) but which Ed Davey, Mike Dixon et al have steadfastly refused to do. Despite thier strategy also failing at winning over more Tories.
I suppose acting like primarily Green achievements are actually just ours certainly is a strategy, but I suspected just like our coalition with them Bristol, it will still be the Greens who gain the credit and boost in local profile; which will ultimately lead to them squeezing us out of the borough.
An excellent article Victor on the great work you are doing. It’s a great shame people like David can’t give credit where credit is due.
That’s a little disingenuous of David!
All the issues Victor has highlighted demonstrate what a progressive council can achieve. In fact, three times as many of our policies have been committed to by the joint administration.
I’m not sure we’re playing second fiddle to anyone. We’re focused on working for our residents and turning the 2026 Southwark Lib Dem manifesto into reality.
Gary Glover
Southwark Liberal Democrats
I agree with David and well said. Some people have short memories but I always remember Sian Berry, now an MP, spitting feathers at the very mention of the Lib Dems. Perhaps they should be invited to a Southwark Council meeting. My aunt and nan, no longer with us, lived in Bermondsey and always voted for Simon Hughes. I don’t think they’d be receptive to this coalition. As David says the beneficiaries will be the Green party. I can just seem them jumping up and down with glee when they take seats off the Lib Dems in future council elections as they are doing in so many urban areas. All these policies above are LD ones not Green ones (though they love to jump on the bandwagon). The party should be putting in the effort to win more seats in inner city areas, not ceding territory to them.
I don’t understand those points at all, Jason. First, the Greens aren’t winning seats off the Lib Dems in Southwark. At the local elections in the borough in May, the Greens only won seats from Labour while we not only held all of our existing wards but gained a councillor in another ward (also from Labour). And, as you’ve said, as a result of the Lib Dems being in the Joint Administration, we are now implementing Liberal Democrat policies to the benefit of residents across Southwark, and punching above our weight in terms of influence and impact. So in what way are we ceding territory to the Greens in Southwark, and what do you think we should be doing differently here?
Victor, Richard, Gary – so proud of you all. Nice to look back on my time as Deputy Leader in Southwark a quarter of a century ago and know that time was not wasted.
The return of Community Councils. What, pray, could be more Lib Dem than that? Well done.