Author Archives: Elin Kingston

As Liberal Democrats, we pride ourselves as being “local champions”.

It’s on every Focus leaflet, in every direct mail. Our spatulas, fitbits and our friends and family who are oft abandoned in favour of doorknocking on a Saturday morning can attest to the fact that we are community people who believe in community politics.

But how can you be a champion of a community that doesn’t exist?

This is the question that has been running around my head after speaking to hundreds of residents in my ward of Waterloo and South Bank, the most central ward in London, in the lead up to May’s elections.

I remember meeting seven people on the same estate who had the same long-standing disrepair issue. But they’d never met each other. Young professionals living in the area for under a year and unable to name the street parallel to theirs before they’re priced out. Families living in social housing longing to move out because the nursery their kids go to was closing.

And those were just the people you could meet – there’s a whole hidden electorate behind intercoms and concierges, inaccessible to the humble community champion. Inhabiting space without any concept of where they are, who they live with, or what the problems may be.

I missed out on being elected in Waterloo and South Bank by 86 votes.

Josh Mitte and Patrick Stillman have both already written on LDV about why campaigns like mine came up short across London. Much of what they say is absolutely spot on, and if we are to win in new places we must have another layer of messaging on top of being a “community champion”. (The Greens won votes in my ward with a paper candidate because their message didn’t rely on locality. “Hope” is a pretty universal concept.)

But though it is no longer sufficient, it is absolutely still essential that we Lib Dems continue to be community champions.

As Tim Farron said in our 2024 General Election Review: