Lib Dem members have received an email from Mike Dixon , the party’s CEO. It is one of his long explainer emails and it is full of useful information – and bar charts! I would strongly advise members to read it in full before commenting below.
In the email Mike discusses our strategy going into a General Election. He asks:
How do we get the balance right between winning in target Westminster seats and making progress right across the country?
What message cuts through to voters right now? What’s the right balance between attacking the Government and setting out a positive vision?
What is the likely outcome at the next election? And what does that mean for our strategy?
I’m not going to spill all the beans here, but there are a couple of points that I want to reflect on.
The first is how to address the challenges of winning more seats under First Past The Post. Mike points out that in 2019 our strategy was to increase our vote share nationally, by focussing on our anti-Brexit stance. It worked. We drew in 1.3 million more votes than in 2017. Under PR that would have given us 80 seats in Parliament, but because we do not yet live under that system we only won 11.
From my perspective we should not see that totally as a failed strategy. What it did do was boost our chances in local elections where elections are more granular. In 2021 we gained control of one more council; in 2022 we added 3 more councils; in 2023 we added a further 12. Over that period we took 639 MORE council seats. And we all know that, as a general rule, we don’t win Westminster seats in a General Election unless we have already gained control of the relevant Council seats.
As Mike explains, after 2019 our strategy changed. The new aim was to win as many Westminster seats as possible in 2024, alongside boosting local and regional successes. We have learnt to our cost the downside of winning fewer seats – as the fourth party in Westminster we have not only lost our privileges in the House, but we also find it much more difficult to attract coverage in the media.
The only way we can win more Parliamentary seats is to target those where we stand the best chance. At the same time, there is a strong mood across the UK that we need to get rid of this awful Tory Government. Not surprisingly many of our target seats are where in the past we have come second to the Conservatives – the so-called Blue Wall.
The email includes some fascinating comparisons with other periods in our history, especially the time under Paddy Ashdown, which has interesting parallels with our own situation. His leadership culminated in 46 seats in 1997, even though our overall vote share had dropped slightly since winning 18 seats in 1992.
It also addresses messaging. We have a strong pre-Manifesto statement, which will be distilled down to its key points as we approach the election. But the most important thing is this:
We have the right messages, but the single most powerful thing we can do is show up on people’s streets, knock on their doors, and listen to their concerns. After that, it is giving them printed, physical literature that speaks to them. Then it is online and social media content.
Please do read the email.
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
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62 Comments
Yesterdays local by election in Carmarthenshire showed a healthy increase of 15% in the Conservative percentage, This is indicative of a trend over the past few weeks, including gains for that party from both Labour and the Lib Dems, todays by election in Devon may well produce more of the same. The May election may be more difficult that many expect.
My view that we will be fortunate to reach 25 seats at the General, despite intensive targeting. My gloomy forecasts for 2015, 2017 and 2019 were borne out, I hope I am wrong this time but the runes seem to be suggesting otherwise.
@theakes – have you actually read the email in full? I am minded not to publish comments here unless people say they have done so. Otherwise we risk having to state the evidence over and over again.
I haven’t got the Email so I filled in the form on the website but that warns that it can take a week to be dealt with so I will be commenting on the article itself, not the email.
The point I want to make is that we have lots of reasons to be cheerful about our prospects.
I went to Electoral Calculus, a site with a good reputation for its predictions. I put in some reasonably pessimistic assumptions, assuming that levels of Anti-Conservative Tactical Voting are no higher than in 1997, that our Vote Share remains around 10% & that the Conservative Vote Share recovers from the current average of 24% to 31% – the level they got in 1997.
All fairly pessimistic but the prediction is that we will get 40 MPs, more than tripling our haul of 2019 & a better proportional increase than we got in 1997.
Lets cheer up & look forward to The Election whenever it comes.
I have been trying to find this Carmarthen result without success
CARMARTHENSHIRE UA; Elli
Ind (Williams) – 33.9%
Conservative – 24.2% (+16.4%)
Labour – 23.3% (-3.4%)
Plaid – 7.7% (-2.7%)
UKIP – 4.3%
Ind (Burdess) – 3.7%
Lib Dem – 2.6%
Gwlad – 0.3%
This is the result, Nigel.
You can find more details at the Vote 2012 UK Forum.
It is good to have Mike Dixon’s analysis and Mary’s reminder to look at it more closely.
Mike is making a case for narrow targeting, but also notes the phenomenon of the Tories recovering support in the run up to voting day. I thing he needs to accept that this will be exacerbated in our target seats if our publicly perceived support is seen as low.
I agree that the 2019 result is often wrongly disparaged. Having a substantial number of seats (80 or so) where we are the challengers matters. My fear is that we gain a handful of new seats and lose most of our second placements.
He cites that the economy, health and immigration are the main public concerns, with ‘Britain leaving the EU’ (sic.. the UK has already left) as “hardly features”, with no recognition of the strong connection of the main concerns to the damage brought about by Brexit. He writes that only 9% of remain voters report that they will vote Conservative without specifying which party they are turning to. We clearly need more of the remaining 91% to support us: is argument is flawed.
Mike Dixon also needs to look at the demographics: I greatly fear that we are not connecting with younger voters, in the way we used to. Our messaging needs to be more distinctive; the pre-manifesto statement needs to be sharpened up (forcing ‘fair’ into 5 key statements borders on banality).
As I live in one I am more interested in how we should campaign in in those constituencies where we can’t win (yet). LDV published a post by me on this topic on 25th January, in which I argued that we should campaign to attract, not votes, but potential activists who were inspired by our principles. I advocated that we should spell these out under, say, four headings; possibly Fairness (we want a decent society and are prepared to pay for it), Internationalism (we don’t regard foreigners as enemies but as partners to create a happier, fairer world), Co-operation (in all spheres) and a Root and Branch reform of our democratic institutions). If Mike Dixon is fully occupied in working out how to win the maximum number of Blue Wall seats I hope one of his deputies is working hard on producing attractive literature on these or similar themes which can be used in “not yet” seats.
“I am more interested in how we should campaign in in those constituencies where we can’t win (yet). LDV published a post by me on this topic on 25th January, in which I argued that we should campaign to attract, not votes, but potential activists who were inspired by our principles.”
https://www.libdemvoice.org/fighting-where-we-cant-win-yet-74580.html
Certainly in parts of the country where there aren’t target seats – or maybe a few but difficult to get to (time-consuming etc.) not every activist is going to help in a target seat. It makes sense for some work to be done on the next group of potential targets.
And I think the powers that be in the party should accept this and facilitate it. But I’m not holding my breath.
Conservative performances in local council by elections have been a lot better this year than one might have expected from the national opinion polls, or Westminster by elections. One reason for this is that they have been reduced to opposition status on many councils, so can campaign on an anti-incumbency ticket. Also, they often campaign as ‘Local Conservatives ‘, distancing themselves from the national party. If they have a reputation as hard-working councillors in a particular area, this may be effective. I don’t think these factors will save them at a GE, but perhaps the local elections in May might not be as bad for them as many expect.
If we are loosing the youth vote it is about time we gave something back. We can start by a policy where Social Rent properties can be built with 30% rent as a young family will not have the income needed for a house. This then gives them a base to start life from. Equally single flats for those who wish to live by themselves .If you do not offer them anything why will the vote for us.
Particularly in non-target seats, the freepost address should mention the Lib Dem achievements in the coalition government. Olly Grender didn’t agree in a previous election (2015 ?) – “that is not what our Focus Groups tell us” – but we were able to amend HQ’s freepost for use in Epsom & Ewell. It seemed to boost our vote percentage.
The party has been on a recovery mission since the debacle that was the 2015 General Election.
This time there is going to be a lot of tactical voting to get Tories out. That will help us where we are second place and hurt us where we are not. In the former we need to hammer the ‘Can’t Win Here’ message for all it’s worth. Elsewhere we need a more nuanced approach aimed at winning a core Liberal vote.
On policy we need something that will catch voters attention like the 1p on income tax to increase funding education. At the moment we are lacking that.
Beating the SNP and regaining 3rd party status is clearly the main target for the coming election. Indeed it would be better to win 21 with the SNP on 20 than win 31 if the SNP wins 32. Fortunately the SNP vote appears to have fallen to around 33% which gives us a great chance.
I thought Mike Dixon’s email was incredibly informative, and, whether or not you agree or disagree with the current strategy of focusing on a few winnable seats, it was very refreshing to see such honesty and openness about what is being done and the reasons for it. Can you imagine the leadership of either Labour or the Tories trusting their members with that kind of information? I certainly can’t.
Unfortunately I don’t appear to have been recieving emails from Mike Dixon since 2022 despite getting others from the party.
But I fear from this post that this could be a case of old generals trying to fight the last war.
In 2019 we didn’t just target wide, we targeted stupid! And the initial number of seats was well beyond the maximum we could conceivably consider targeting now. These seats were mostly places where we were in third, including some seemingly where we’d had zero presence.
According to a liberator article by Nick Harvey it was based on old data from when we and the Brexit party were high in the polls before Johnson became PM and got the Brexit deal. And we didn’t adjust our strategy despite the wildly different circumstances.
We were also targeting a load of Brexit voting seats despite having made ourselves toxic to Brexit voters.
This election is different, the Tories are considerably weaker, they may recover slightly but this isn’t the Brexit rollercoaster of 2019. We also have detailed constituency level data from both yougov and electoral calculus this year showing that the Tories are at or below 35% in nearly every seat we came second to them last time.
The only thing that would make it unreasonable to target all 104 is that many are clustered together. But targeting around 70 ought to be reasonable.
Current predictions suggest we’ll lose our second place in many however if we don’t campaign enough to remind voters that labour are third.
It would also be wrong to assume that labour aren’t also vulnerable right now. In 2019 labour supporters were very enthusiastic for Corbyn, now they’re peeved that Starmer keeps spitting in they’re eye! The LGBT community especially.
But there isn’t a clear more progressive party than labour in most seats. In Bristol Central however there is; the Green Party, and they are having little trouble hoovering up despondent progressive voters there before labour even gets into government.
The danger is they’ll also knock us into forth in many of the metropolitan seats where we once challenged labour, and prevent us from doing so again.
If we make a concerted effort to convince these voters that we are more progressive than labour however we could really make a big impact, but we’ll need the kinds of eye catching policies we had in 2005 and 2010 to do it.
Might we consider using more compact, snappy, more memorable language such as:
Close the tax gap!
Britain doesn’t have or need a credit card!
Help us provide for our starving children!
Uncrumble the collapsing concrete!
Might we also consider that part of our party’s purpose is to change the current language and attitudinal contexts which restrict conversation, thought and policies to the cruel and unfounded theories of neoliberalism/austerity?
? A. B. C? (Anyone But Conservatives)
I haven’t had the letter from Mike Dixon either.
Would somebody be so kind as to post it here?
Chris Moore: I hope the Mike Dixon e-mail is NOT published here.
It contans some detailed information on strategy anbd tactics that we don’t particularly want to tell the whole world in a public forum. I know the Tory and Labour Leaderships will have obtained a copy, but to put the contents one here will still weaken our campaigns in target seats. Let’s not be naive like we were back in 2015!
I enjoyed reading Mike Dixon’s clear analysis, and liked the sense of direction it gave. Our constituency is likely to be developmental, like Peter Wrigley’s. I favour some very simple messaging. Freedom, Fairness and International Focus. Even with only a little teasing out, I’ve found this works in interesting people who want to know why I’m a liberal democrat!
We won’t be publishing the whole email here, for the reasons given by Steve Comer. My post refers to stuff that is already in the public domain.
May I interject a technical enquiry, please?
I printed out Katharine Pindar’s response to Polly Toynbee’s piece in the Guardian : “Polly, the LDs are on the case already”, in order to examine the 42 Comments up to – or down to- my own.
But the print-out of 6 pages of very tiny print did not include any of the orange print that precisely locates the chosen text when you have it ‘live’ on the screen.
I do wonder why that is — and whether the orange timings could be included in future, please?
Further to my attempts to cheer The Party up – the latest Poll puts The Tories on 18%. Thats just one Poll of course & an outlier – the normal range for The Conservatives is 20% to 29%. Still, their Polling average has been falling over the last 3 Weeks. Its safe to say that the longer they cling on, the worse they will do.
Yes I read the e-mail, yes I didn’t like its message for where I live, and I say no more in a public form. BUT I am a Lib Dem, believe in our core values, and am continuing to phone canvass in one of our key target seats for someone who I think will make an excellent MP. We can do much with our keyboards, and spend much time complaining (OK I do a fair bit of that where necessary) but Lib Dem activists not near a target seat, or not able to be out on the streets needs to pick a seat (yes there is a choice) and pick up a phone.
I’ve pledged 2 hours a week and only just managed that over the past month or so, but I have mainly, and others need to do at least that too!
Ok, understood re posting Mike’s letter on here.
I’m happy to tell you that I successfully receive many communications from national and local party seeking donations.
PS If the contents are so sensitive, wouldn’t it be even less naive not to be sending them out to members?
theakes – A very good result in Devon 🍾
I have read the email now & it is an excellent piece, my only real disagreement is with the final part assessing the size of the expected Conservative recovery.
Comparing the coming Election with 2019 seems to me to be confusing ourselves in a way that isn’t needed. 2019 was a weird Election, nothing like anything else.
That the Conservatives will cut the Labour lead seems the most likely result ( though not inevitable) but currently Labour are 22% ahead, on average. The typical Conservative recovery would reduce that to 13%, quite enough for a solid majority.
I haven’t seen the email and neither have my local party chair or treasurer (I’m local party secretary). I am very concerned about this email being sent to selected people in the party and not to others. If Mary, who knows my email, will forward it to me, I will pass it on to them.
It is possible that the Tories are so unpopular that they hit FPTP going down and lose a shedload of seats. If they did get 18% then they might not even be the official opposition. It happened in Canada and they went down to 2 seats. Whilst I understand the logic of Mike’s piece, the strategy should retain enough flexibility to target more seats if things go well in the GE.
Yes, if the Tories hit < 20% then they must be getting close to the point where FPTP will work against them. In that scenario, it's quite possible that we could get fewer votes than the Tories but more seats – because we know how to target a few seats and maximise our vote on those seats in order to partially overcome FPTP, but the Tories have never had to do that and will probably not be able to. Plus almost no-one will vote tactically against the LibDems but loads of people will gladly vote tactically against the Tories.
I don't think the Tories will sink that low in the actual election. But even if they do, I don't think it should change our strategy. Unless LibDem % vote gets up into the 30's (not gonna happen) the way to maximise seats will still be to ruthlessly target the few most winnable ones. The only difference will be that having 30-odd seats may be enough to make us the official opposition. But let's not get excited just yet. History tells us that the Tories are more likely than not to recover a fair bit of support as election day approaches.
Since LDV hasd ‘members only’ private forum, I never cease to wonder why people endeavour to discuss party strategy in this public arena unless, of course, the whole thing is a serious cunningly-plotted ruse designed to mislead political opponents.
Paul Barker, Electoral Calculus is NOT “a site with a good reputation for its predictions”. It uses a very crude algorithm and in some years it has been utterly hopeless. It only does reasonably well in circumstances where (as now) there is largely a two-party effective battleground nationally, however, if “Reform” intervenes effectively and selectively it will revert to being pretty hopeless again like it was in the Lib Dem heydey.
I am also more than a little puzzled by Mary’s reference to the 2019 General Election result ” . . . . .boost (ing) our chances in local elections. . . .” As someone who (due to alphabetical listing) was the Party’s first ever ‘trained trainer’ in local government campaigning, I would suggest that there is no sensible basis for such an assertion. While selective good performances in local elections may have a sizable effect upon later national elections in the same areas there is very rarely any reverse effect. The Party’s present situation nationally is also nothing at all like it was in 1997.
The reality is that there is no prospect of the conservatives coming third. Most of the bi – election defeats can be explained at least in large part either by very specific circumstances and / or fed up Tory’s staying home, there is no clear evidence that huge or significant numbers have converted to a new cause.
Every national election I watch the Lib Dems talk themselves into entirely unrealistic view points as to what they can achieve if only four or five critical factors all go their way, only to watch them spend months after the election gazing at each others navals and wondering what happened. It’s like watching a Sunderland fan convince themselves they can get promotion if their team scores 20 goals in each of the last five games, everyone else scores zero and the bottom two get docked an additional 10 points each for financial irregularity. On paper it’s possible, in reality it ain’t going to happen.
Please God don’t do that again! The realistic target is 20 – 30 additional seats max, given the circumstances it should be more but it isn’t. Concentrate on what can be achieved this time and then dream later, please please don’t do it the other way round….again! Stay focussed in reality.
@Martin Bennet, agreed re your post on the youth vote, that said, at least the party can still talk about having a youth vote, unlike the Conservative party and the Lib Dem approach to climate change and the E.U. aligns closely with that of the younger generations.
Laurence,
It was an all-member e-mail so, assuming that you and your colleagues have checked your spam folders, have you opted out from Party e-mails?
Managed to get someone to forward me the email. It’s interesting but some points I’d take issue with.
It’s implied that possible justification for targeting an extremely low number of seats is that the polls narrowed significantly in 1997 and other elections. But do we really want to plan for the most pessimistic scenario and risk come out with half the number of seats we could have if we’d been more ambitious?
There are key differences from 1997: the economy was actually doing well that election, Rishi Sunak is much less popular than John Major, and voters are far less loyal to the main two parties than 27 years ago.
The email also suggests that our only plan for our non target seats is to just win our target seats! And only then will we have the media attention to dream of winning elsewhere.
Problem is without a campaigning we risk losing second place, and where we are third but have potential to grow we could slip into 4th or 5th and more media coverage wont get us out of that. Plus do we really expect members in the north to travel 2 hours to get to a target seat?
Finally for the section on what voters wants right now, our messaging comes across as “there there we’ll make it better” when what voters really need in this situation is hope, of the kind we offered in 2010 and labour offered in 1997, but nobody is offering this now.
I cannot stress sufficiently he importance of having material available for recruiting activists in the “not yet “ seats. For the argument see
https://www.libdemvoice.org/fighting-where-we-cant-win-yet-74580.html (thanks to nonconformistadical for telling us how to find that.)
In his excellent book “How to be a Liberal” Ian Dunt writes (page 442/3) “For many years now, liberals have failed to argue for our values. We have apologised for them, or seem embarrassed by them, or not even mentioned them at all.”
I regret that, if asked, most people would struggle to define what we stand for. Maybe: “Like the Tories but nicer.” So by all means let’s concentrate on the winnable seats in order to become the third party (and stop fantasising about becoming the second -yet) but provide the near-derelict seats some attractive material to use via the Free Post to recruit activists for the future.
@ Peter Wrigley. It’s not just focussing more on near derelict seats, Peter. It’s been allowing the traditionally previously held seats of Colne Valley, Leeds West, Redcar, Burnley, Rochdale, the Borders et al to wither away…….. and that’s what’s been allowed to happen under the so called Blue Wall strategy over the last few years by focussing on comfy leafy Home Counties seats which will eventually return to “hanging on to nurse for fear of something worse” in a few years time.
I thought that Mike Dixon’s email was excellent, honest, open and very well argued. I was relieved and impressed to see such clear sighted analysis. I thought his point about what the 17% of electors currently ‘undecided’ might do is a very timely warning. In terms of Party advantage, hopefully they will abstain or vote Reform. I think that we and Labour have probably bagged everyone we are likely to get, and I suspect many ‘undecideds’ will indeed drift back to the Conservatives.
In our printed literature we should have a long term strategy of something specific to this Party that the electorate can latch onto when they are deciding how to vote. My suggestion is to show some compassion and a sense of justice. How this is done will vary.
I am so glad that I don’t have responsibility for Strategy & Targeting – its impossible to get completely Right & very easy to get spectacularly wrong. I like the idea of flexibility to take advantage of Polls shifting or failing to shift but in practise we are only likely to take Seats we have been working for Years.
On that question of whether The Conservatives could come 3rd in Seats – it sounds weird but it is technically possible. If there is no great return of “Undecided Voters” to the Tory cause & if Reform hang on to “Their” Voters then Yes, We could come 2nd. Keep Watching The Polls.
@Mark Valladares
I certainly am not opted out of Party emails; I typically average nearly one a day when I count all the emails from campaigners, compliance, conferences, data-protection, help, membership, support, not to mention the emails from my regional party. Yet this “all member” email did not reach me (and it’s not in my spam folder) nor did it reach another three members of my local party Executive Committee to my knowledge while only two have reported receiving it. It would certainly be interesting to know what proportion of all party members this email really reached. Others’ complaints on here suggest that I am far from alone. Had it not been for Mary writing this article, I like others would never have known about the existence of this “all members” email.
I haven’t fully read the email but I’m not convinced its an either or choice of votes vs seats. For a start, voters who would respond most positively to a radical Liberal message are overrepresented in target seats so target them and you win more seats. Second “you can’t win a ground war without air cover” (John Curtice).
@Marco
It is absolutely not the case that the most “radical” liberal voters live in our target seats. These voters are generally students and urban middle class voters who are most concentrated in central London, Oxford, Cambridge, Brighton, Inner city Bristol and similar areas of other major cities.
We only started to make inroads with these voters in 2005 and 2010 when we finally started showing people what we really stood for and they were beginning to form a new lib dem core vote; but before they could develop any loyalty to us we doust them with petroleum and lit up a flame thrower!
They actually did finally vote for us in the 2019 euro elections. But now they mostly vote labour with the green party now bieng the ones making inroads with them whilst we exclusively focus on winning over soft Tories in affluent suburbs and rural areas.
Sorry to bang on about this but something weird does seem to be happening with The Conservative Vote share in Opinion Polls – they have lost two or three percent in the last couple of Weeks.
Three Weeks ago The Conservative average was twenty five percent, now that figure is twenty three percent or twenty two if you just take the last Week. Maybe the fall will stop there but if it doesn’t The Government will face a real crisis within Weeks.
Whatever the plan was Sunak may have to go for a May Election or see his Party disintegrate.
@David LG: Actually the rot was setting in even before 2010. We started coasting in local election results when Clegg became leader. We failed to win seats from Labour on the back of the Cleggmania surge (and actually lost seats to Labour) because candidatitis in no-hope seats messed up our targeting strategy — we took our eyes off the prize. This is something we cannot afford to allow to happen again.
It wasn’t only left-leaning Lib Dem voters who stopped voting for us in 2015 because of the Coalition — many Con~LD waverers could see little difference between the two Coalition parties and therefore decided they might as well vote for the larger one. Differentiation from the Tories is every bit as important for winning over soft Tory voters as soft Labour voters.
It is much easier to win votes and seats from the Tories than from Labour when opposing a tired, discredited Tory government. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also work Labour-facing seats, but we mustn’t kid ourselves into thinking we can win any this time around (except maybe Sheffield Hallam).
David LG – we may mean slightly different things by radical liberal but out of our top 50 target seats I estimate that 38 voted remain, have above average % with high education levels and are more supportive of liberal values generally. Therefore targeting seats indirectly by targeting specific voter segments may be a good compromise.
Tory voters switch when the Lib Dems have momentum, which is gained by winning votes from Labour. When LD vote collapses into Lab as in 2015 these voters switch back to Con. Winning votes from Lab is about policy, winning votes from the Tories is about having national momentum.
@ Marco,
“Winning votes from Lab is about policy, winning votes from the Tories is about having national momentum.”
This is a good way of looking at it. I’d add the Greens and, in Scotland, the SNP too. It’s ultra short termism to concentrate solely on attacking the Tories.
Labour under Starmer are little different from the Tories. They are such an easy target, and it’s a mystery why Lib Dems are essentially giving them a free pass. The Starmer who won the Labour leadership bears no resemblance to the Starmer we see now. Surely, Lib Dems can’t be short of ideas!
Marco’s analysis is fairly plausible. I am sure that the key is momentum, though I am not quite so sure that its origin matters. Whether in target seats or anywhere, voters will turn away from us if we do not appear to be gaining support. Those who are fixated on targeting specific seats need to understand that the strategy requires movement in a national campaign.
On policy, there is currently little to distinguish us from Labour, but we should put forward a distinctively Liberal analysis and possibly take advantage of our poor standing (polls and parliamentary representation) by being specific about policies, where Labour who expect to be in government, dare not.
“On policy, there is currently little to distinguish us from Labour
And there is little to distinguish Labour from the Tories!
What is the point of democracy if we get the same government, with just different faces, no matter who we vote for?
“Whether in target seats or anywhere, voters will turn away from us if we do not appear to be gaining support”
Sadly, a recent poll (Sevanta?) puts the LDs on 6%. That might be an outlier, but one of the downsides of just targeting 10% of seats (the 15 that need to be defended, and the top 50 targets), is that the national vote % gets squeezed, there’s a perception that the party has become irrelevant, and vote share may decline, not just in the target seats.
Sorry – the last sentence should have said ‘not just in the non-target seats.’
Apart from the Lord Ashcroft Poll all the others have us in a range of 9% to 12%, the average & the most common figure are both 10% – this hasn’t really shifted in Months.
The crucial Points for Us are – how concentrated is our Vote in our Target Seats & what is the level of Tactical Voting.
I strongly recommend reading Mark Packs newsletter on Polling. He cuts through the noise.
Sunak has made a statement in response to ITV about an election on May 2: “there won’t be a general election on that day”. This is against my own assumptions, that I cannot trust Sunak means I still would not rule it out, however if Sunak’s political ineptness does lead to delay, it does offer our Party an extraordinary opportunity.
Come what may, there will be local elections in which we have an opportunity to record a good number of wins and a much better polling percentage than given by current opinion polls. I had assumed Sunak would have prioritised preventing this; it would offer the possibility for the Party to develop some of the momentum on a national scale that is necessary for constituency targeting to be effective.
@ Martin Bennett ” it would offer the possibility for the Party to develop some of the momentum on a national scale that is necessary for constituency targeting to be effective”.
In order to make that happen, Martin, there’s also a requirement for highly visible inspirational charismatic leadership.
“Come what may, there will be local elections in which we have an opportunity to record a good number of wins and a much better polling percentage than given by current opinion polls.”
I think we will get a better percentage than the polls give us but even on the same percentage, we should get a big boost in terms of seats. The Tories did well in 2021 when these seats were last fought and look set for a disaster. I think we can rule out his calling it in the immediate aftermath of a wipe-out. It would look like accepting that the people had spoken and told him it was time to go.
As Peter says
“On policy, there is little to distinguish us from Labour. And there is little to distinguish Labour from the Tories!”
Indeed it is depressing to see such dull uniformity from Kier Starmer’s Labour, but it is even more depressing to see the LibDems failing to be different to any noticeable extent. It is as if our senior figures have all forgotten the basic rule of third-party politics.
Lib Dems have to offer something different.
In General Elections politics is normally bipolar. Almost every important issue is a yes or no answer to basic questions like “Should there be less immigration?’ and usually the two main parties take differing sides, so there is no room for a third view. Things they agree on are often difficult to oppose, even if wrong like “Do you want lots of free stuff with no increase in taxation?” It is difficult to be different.
However, over many years the Liberals and Lib Dems campaigned on two fundamentally different points
1) Lib Dem councillors and councils ran things better than the other two – COMPETENCE.
2) The Lib Dems were more honest than the others – TRUST.
and people saw we were right and this led to a new point
3) The Lib Dems were RELEVANT
Sadly 2) was undermined and 3) destroyed in coalition.
There is still one big opportunity to be different and where we are known to be right, but no-one seems able to say its name.
@ Peter Martin Whoever you vote for, neoliberal globalisation gets in.
@ David Evans As usual, David, you make some profoundly interesting comments and spell out one or two uncomfortable home truths.
I would add a further dimension which (after the sixty two years that have passed since I first joined the party) seem pretty obvious to me.
When the party has done reasonably well in the past it has been able to offer :
1. Charismatic Leadership with no fear of something interesting and original to say.
2. Paid due regard to the interests and needs of those regions and parts of the UK outside the ‘Blue Wall’ Home Counties.
Both of these factors need attention, otherwise what happened just a bit south of you yesterday will become contagious.
David Raw: I much prefer your “with no fear of something interesting and original to say” to your “charismatic leadership”. In any case, even if it were desirable, which is certainly not always the case, from where would this “charismatic leadership” come? Nevertheless, it is quite weird that Ed seems to command less presence when on air than he did ten years ago. I guess this might have something to do with having or not having “something interesting and original to say”.
I do hope the Party is well organised for media presentation in the aftermath of the local elections. They will be given greater attention that usual with pundits extrapolating for the impending general election.
I actually think Starmers caution is understandable given the demographic Labour need to win. It would be risky for them to be more radical. It is Ed Daveys caution that I find truly baffling. This could be a liberal moment with a bit more boldness yet we have very little to say.